Legacy
by Zosonils
Summary: Some time ago, Sonic the Hedgehog was torn from his friends and presumed dead. Five years later, the blue hedgehog returns - but he isn't the same. What's happening to Sonic? Can he reunite his broken team? Is Eggman still out there? What force is controlling the hero from within? And can things ever be the same again? Rated T purely for safety! Nothing mature here.
1. Chapter 1: A Hero's Demise

**Chapter 1 - A Hero's Demise**

 **Well, here's my next fanfiction. The name 'Legacy' sucks, I know, but I couldn't think of anything halfway decent. Tell me if you think of something better: credit will be given in the description. No spoilers, but it involves time travel, lots of emotionalness (which isn't a word, but I don't care, so shut up), and piecing together the fragments of a shattered team. I guess read it, review it, and enjoy. Oh, and a warning that applies to the whole story: I will use the words 'damn' and 'hell'. I don't consider them to be strong language, but many people believe that they are swear words, so I'll put this warning in for the sake of those people. Anyways, imma shut up now.**

 _Somewhere in the world, a battle was taking place. An evil tyrant was attacking the world once again._

 _Five friends fought back bravely - a carefree, high-speed hero, a determined young inventor, a powerful, devoted guardian, a hammer-wielding heroine, and the ultimate life form._

 _They were winning the fight so far. But then their enemy's most villainous creation yet was sent out…_

"The Super Egg! This robot is the result of every single resource I have at my disposal… and it is powered by the Chaos Emeralds!"

"What? No way!" Sonic shouted in disbelief. "I've got all the Chaos Emeralds right here!"

Eggman threw back his head and laughed. "Think again, rodent!" he smiled evilly. "Did you really think I would just leave all the Emeralds lying around, guarded by just a few Badniks? I put fake ones in their place! They have the exact same properties and infinite energy as the regular Chaos Emeralds!"

"So that's why they came up on my radar like normal, and how Knuckles could sense them…" Tails murmured to himself. In a more audible voice, he asked, "But what's the point? If they have as much power as real Chaos Emeralds, then Sonic will go super and take out your Super Egg trash anyway."

"Ha! Exactly!" Eggman triumphantly grinned. "Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you. See, I've corrupted these false Chaos Emeralds. If Sonic doesn't use his Super form, he'll watch as I destroy his friends, his home, and anyone who dares side with him, before finally destroying him. But if he does, the special Emeralds I made for him will, once he loses that extra power, warp him into a world of no time, no space, no anything, and he will be trapped there forever!"

Sonic's face became one or two shades paler, but he kept himself together. "Forever? I-I don't think so… Even if this fake world of yours isn't fake, I'll escape somehow. There's always a hole in your plan. And even if I can't, my friends will find a way to get me out."

With a maddened glint in his eye, Eggman's smile didn't fall. "Ah, yes," he agreed, "there's no doubt you'll eventually come back. So I prepared for this moment carefully. Should you return from the infinite void of nothingness, the energy will respond to the commands I left in it with my expert craftsmanship. Your little rodent friend will slowly be roboticized, leaving him prone to my manipulations. So good luck saving the world now!" After one last evil cackle, Eggman pointed towards Station Square. "Now go, my Super Egg! And leave not a single building standing! So that I can build Eggmanland and rule the world!"

The huge machine stomped towards the city. The five heroes raced after it, desperate to find some alternative way of stopping it. One of the robot's claw-like arms shot out towards a skyscraper, breaking it and three similar towers behind it clean in half with almost no effort. People ran for shelter, screaming, but there was nowhere they could hide. Now there was only one option left to save everybody.

Sonic took the fake Chaos Emeralds out. "Nobody lives forever," he said calmly, ignoring the shocked reaction from his friends. "And this is his most overpowered creation yet, right? I have to do this for the sake of the world. This thing is built with every last resource of his, so if it's wrecked beyond repair, he'll spend years rebuilding his empire." He grabbed the false Emeralds and their power began to flow into him. As his spines rose up and became yellow, his eyes turned red, and he started floating, he continued, "And if this is what I have to do to save the world, then so be it!"

A wave of insane energy rippled through the air. Super Sonic rose from the ground. "Let's finish this, tiny," he said to the huge robot standing before him. The Super Egg made a few clicking and whirring noises, then fired a laser at the golden hedgehog, creating an explosion of light. When the flash vanished, Super Sonic was still floating in place. "Not too bad," he shrugged. "But I'm invincible." He then charged head-first at the robot, and just as the boom of a hero breaking the sound barrier nearly deafened his friends below, he shot right through it, knocking it down. A shockwave rippled through the ground, but neither Super Sonic nor the Super Egg noticed. The robot got up and sent an explosive missile out. But instead of it going towards the spiky hero, it flew down to the ground. A blast demolished the pavement, throwing some people, among them Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Shadow, backwards. "Guys!" Super Sonic yelled, fearing for his friends. This was what the Super Egg had been waiting for. It stretched out a metal claw attached to a cable and struck the hero, pinning him to the wall of a building. The hedgehog turned back to his foe. "Oh, so you want to play rough, do you? In that case…"

Super Sonic clenched his hands into tight fists. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, but then an explosion shattered the silence. The Super Egg's charred components went flying, and the real Chaos Emeralds raced through the air and vanished, going to all the corners of the world as they usually did when their work was complete. Sonic returned to his normal form just as he came to the ground, and immediately fell over, exhausted. Dr. Eggman gasped. "He actually did it… Damn you all! Th-this isn't over, you hear me, rodents? I'll be back, and your saviour here won't be around to pull you out of the fire!" With that, he flew off in his Eggmobile, muttering darkly.

Sonic's friends came rushing over to him, closely followed by at least a hundred humans. "No…" Tails said quietly. But he couldn't stop anything with denial. Sonic was already starting to look transparent.

"Don't worry, guys," he said, smiling sadly. "We saved the world, right?"

Amy raced forward and hugged her crush. "Sonic, don't go!" she cried, unable to hold back her emotions. "I… I need y-you…"

"I have to go," Sonic sighed, putting a rapidly vanishing arm around Amy. "…I can't stop it."

Shadow looked at his feet. He started to breathe in a strange way. "I've already lost a friend once," he said shakily. "Try to return, Sonic!" There was something in his voice that he'd never expressed before in the presence of the blue hedgehog - respect.

Knuckles turned to Sonic. "Come on, man," he urged his friend. "Fight it! Stay with us, dude!"

Sonic closed his eyes. He was barely visible now. "I can't. I'm sorry." He sounded like he was about to break down, but kept it together. Taking a deep breath, he continued. "…Life goes on, okay? Stuff is gonna keep happening, even when I'm gone. So you have to keep moving forward, too. Just remember that I'll try my best to come back, and that things won't be bad for too long." Knowing that his time was running out, Sonic looked his best friend in the eye. "Hey, Tails? While… while I'm away, I need you to just stay strong, okay? Keep moving forward. I know this'll be especially hard on you, but you have to cope, and you have to not give up. Can you do that for me?"

Tails stared back at his friend. A tear appeared in his eye, but he blinked it away. He wasn't going to let himself do that. He nodded. "…Okay."

Suddenly, Amy's arms closed on nothingness and she fell over. Sonic was clearly no longer physically in this world. As he faded from view, he shouted in a voice barely possible to hear, "I'll come back! I don't know how, but I'll return, and I won't forget you…"

With that, the blue blur vanished from sight. Tails fell to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. Shadow unexpectedly put a hand on the little fox's shoulder. "Life can be tough," he said, his voice wavering. "But he promised to return, so we can hold out hope, right?" Tails looked up to the ultimate life form. "I know how this works," Shadow continued. "Just… just don't forget them. Only when we forget them will they truly be gone…"

And with the five friends reduced to four, an uneasy silence descended. As the sun began to set and the night sky took over, Tails could have sworn he saw the face of his best friend watching over him from the stars.


	2. Chapter 2: Five Years Later

**Chapter 2 - Five Years Later**

 **Hey guys! Well, I'm on the second chapter now. I planned on having this go differently, but changed my mind about the story. No spoilers, but I was originally going to have some memory loss thrown in here. Then I changed my mind, because then I'd have pretty much just ripped off Shadow the Hedgehog, including the damn edginess (which I'm trying not to make seem too forced, by the way, so I hope it turned out okay). Hey, whatever. You probably don't give a Chaos Emerald about this. Anyway, point is, second chapter now! Yay or something. I didn't get any reviews for the last chapter. Honestly? I don't care! I'm writing this all anyway, because I want to. I appear to have a few followers now, so thanks, guys. That's all from me, I guess. Enjoy!**

 _5 years later_

The year after Sonic's apparent death had been the hardest. Things happened perhaps fittingly quickly. Reports telling the world the crushing news. Endless memorial services. The entire planet alternating between anger and sadness. In a nutshell, the normal response to somebody so beloved dying. But for the hero's friends, nothing was as easy as the rest of the world made it look. Obviously, no sane person living anywhere in the world was happy to hear the news. But Sonic's closest friends - Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Shadow - were hit far harder than anybody else. The famous hedgehog had been the one to hold everyone together, and with his sudden absence, the other four were broken apart.

Shadow was the first to leave. The pain of losing somebody else was too much for him to handle. He returned to working with Team Dark at G.U.N., never making any effort to get in touch with his old friends. If it weren't for Tails' expert hacking of government records, there would have been no way for the rest of the former team to know where the ultimate life form was. But over time, Shadow went into more dangerous and more secretive missions until eventually, no records were kept of the path that he took alongside Rouge and Omega. No-one besides a select few military officials knew where he was. And so Shadow the Hedgehog vanished, seen by nobody for five long years.

Not long after Shadow left, Knuckles departed as well. He moved back to Angel Island 'for good this time, to properly fulfil the duties of a Guardian'. The island in the sky stayed safe and secure, but its sole inhabitant was never heard from again. Knuckles never contacted Tails or Amy. Nothing happened on Angel Island to bring them over. The two remaining teammates tried to call the echidna - he never responded. There wasn't any evidence pointing to where Knuckles could be. Was he still on his island? Did he remember what he used to be a part of? Was he even alive? Knuckles the Echidna didn't return, and the world seemed to forget him.

Amy stayed with Tails for nearly a year. She watched as the young inventor constantly put together confusing devices to bring back his best friend, and she comforted him after every failure. It was a tedious life, and one that could never be truly happy. Perhaps it was this never-ending cycle of hoping desperately for things to work out, only for those hopes to be crushed, that pushed her to her breaking point. Maybe it was just pure sadness. Whatever it was, Amy couldn't stand it any longer. And so came the day of the argument, the day that both of Sonic's remaining friends snapped under the pressure.

"Just stop it, okay? I can't take this anymore! This isn't going to work!"

"Yes, it is! It has to! He promised he'd come back!"

"Well, people can't keep all their promises! Accept it!"

"No! The next one will work! I just need a little more time, and then I can bring him back… isn't that what you want, too?"

"You know how much I want things to go back to the way they were, but they can't, okay? He isn't. Coming. Back."

"He has to! I'm not gonna give up! I don't care how long it takes, I'll bring him back here, and-"

"HE'S DEAD, OKAY? HE'S DEAD! EGGMAN KILLED HIM, AND HE CAN'T COME BACK!"

"SHUT UP!"

It was the day after that that Amy disappeared under the cover of night. She left nothing behind except a note. _I can't stay here any longer. I'm leaving, and I doubt that I'll come back. Now, I know this'll be hard on you, but we can't live like this, and I know you'll cope. I'll be traveling the world. I want to see if I can start a new life. Well… goodbye. Amy._ So Amy Rose left, and nobody saw her until five years after the day when everything changed.

The last member of what was once a team was Tails. For five long and mostly lonely years, he stayed put on South Island. He never left the island for anything. Most of his time went towards putting together machines, all of them designed to find his lost friend. None of them were successful. Anybody else would've given up hope and moved on after such a long time. But not Tails. He waited, days, weeks, months, years, and never gave up. Whenever he felt like it was pointless, he remembered Sonic's parting words. _"I know this'll be especially hard on you, but you have to cope, and you have to not give up."_ He had agreed to that… he had agreed never to give up. He knew that Sonic was out there somewhere, and no matter how long it took, he would find a way to bring him home. So Miles 'Tails' Prower lived on, waiting for his hero to return.

xX*Xx

It was about 1 in the morning when a strange noise jolted Tails out of his sleep. He opened his eyes slowly, wondering what had woken him up. It sounded like a sort of thudding noise, like something hitting something else. Suddenly, the sound came again, clearer this time. It obviously came from outside the house. Tails rubbed his eyes and pushed the door open. He stepped outside and looked around, not expecting much. He scanned the area. Grass, flowers, trees, his doormat, more trees, lots of grass, some guy lying on the ground, oh yeah, LOADS of grass, the wall of his house - wait, what? Tails looked back. His eyes hadn't been playing tricks on him. Somebody was slumped on the ground, and whoever it was wasn't moving. The fox immediately ran towards the stranger out of a mix of concern and curiosity.

Whoever had mysteriously appeared there was male, and he was a hedgehog. Tails instantly noticed that his right arm, left leg, right ear, and a few spines turned into metal somewhere. On his left hand, he was wearing a glove which might have been white once, but was now burnt and literally falling apart. The shoe on his right foot was similarly charred, but to a lesser degree, and the original colour would probably be visible in full light. It was too dark to tell what colour he was, or anything else about him. Tails uncertainly placed a hand on the hedgehog's left shoulder, and gave him a light shake. He opened his eyes. They were unfocused. "What?" he asked nobody in particular. Shaking his head, he sat up. "Owww… what's going on? Did it work?" He noticed Tails for the first time. "Hey, excuse me? I don't really know what - Wait a second! Are you…"

"Oh, hi," Tails nervously said. "Er… My name is Tails, and you're on South Island. Do you need any help?"

"Tails!" the hedgehog exclaimed. "Oh, holy Chaos, it is you! It's been so long, man… Hold on. What year is it?"

"Uh, it's 3241," Tails answered, confused. "Why?"

The stranger gasped and covered his face in his hands. "Oh my god, five years? God damn it, Silver, why did you screw everyone over like that?" He looked up at Tails. "Okay. Dude, we kind of need to talk. Jeez, this must be confusing, but… Look, I just really have to explain things. Fast."

Tails stared for a second before gathering himself. "Alright… Uh, come inside, then." He walked towards his house, motioning for the hedgehog to follow. "Can you stand up?" He got to his feet, answering the fox's question. "Okay, good. Also, I never got your name."

Both of them walked inside. In the light, Tails could finally see the hedgehog's colour: dark blue. He looked the fox in the eye, his emerald green staring into sky blue.

"It's me, Tails. Sonic the Hedgehog."

 **Ooh, cliff hanger! See you next chapter!**


	3. Chapter 3: I'm Back, What'd I Miss?

**Chapter 3 - I'm Back, What'd I Miss?**

 **Dear Quantum27: Thank you for reviewing, and I'm glad you liked it! I'm kind of obsessive about grammar, lol, and my computer puts a squiggly blue line under pretty much every two words. So that's just about never a problem. I really like 'Scattered Time' as a name. If I don't get any other suggestions, I'll probably use that. Thank you! And yes, Silver is involved. I explain a bit further in this chapter. As for Amy not keeping in touch, well, in a way it's impossible. No spoilers, but I have plans for her, evil laughter (just kidding, she'll be fine). Well, thank you for the review.**

 **Dear John: I'm glad you like the story! And in answer to your question… honestly, I don't exactly know what you mean by Sonic Android. I'm assuming that you mean a duplicate of the real Sonic, so, well, yes and no. No, he isn't a copy, but yes, he's different from the Sonic we know. This is a difficult question, and Google refuses to define it further for me and just sends me to the App Store - damn you, Google! - but I guess that the short answer is no. This is the Sonic who made the ultimate sacrifice in Chapter 1. Sorry to be so vague, but I don't want to spoil the story. *shrugs***

 **Dear angryhater112: Thanks! Your name makes me very relieved that I got a nice review, lol.**

 **Well, I'm back! (Yeah, I know - I write fast.) I am literally surprised that I made it this far. I usually get two chapters done, then forget what I had planned, suffer writer's block, say "Screw this," and leave it without bothering to delete it because maybe I'll get back to it, which I never do, lol. Good news: here in Australia, the school holidays are less than a week away! So there'll be a couple weeks of nice, fast updates. Yay! Okay, that's enough from me. Read, review and enjoy! :)**

There was silence. Neither hedgehog nor fox said a word. Finally, Tails managed to stutter out a question. "Sonic? Are… are you really… you came back?"

Sonic nodded. "Yep. Sonic the Hedgehog is back. And yes, this is real, and no, you're not dreaming, and no, just because that's exactly what someone in a dream would say doesn't mean you're in a dream. It's been ages, hasn't it?"

"You're back…" Tails repeated, unable to believe what was happening. "Oh, Chaos, you're actually here." His face lit up. "Oh my god, you're back! Sonic, you're back! Everyone thought you were dead, but you're alright!" He rushed forward and grabbed onto his friend.

"Whoa!" Sonic laughed, nearly falling over. "Chill out! Wait, no, it's been five years on your end. Okay, never mind, do whatever you want." He hugged Tails back. "Jeez, I've missed you so much."

Tails didn't respond for a while. He was too excited to do anything. After a minute, he calmed down a little, and let go. "How did you escape? I was trying so hard to get you back! What even happened?"

"It's a long story," Sonic explained. "And I know that's the most ridiculously overused sentence ever, but it's true. This is gonna take a while to explain. Could we sit down or something?"

The friends walked into Tails' house and sat down on the couch. "By the way, nice shoes," Sonic commented. Tails looked down at his shoes – red, with white straps and a buckle.

"Oh, thanks," he said. "I started wearing them to remind me of you and keep me motivated to try and bring you back. Only I guess it didn't matter, because here you are all of a sudden…"

Sonic smiled, touched. "That's really cool. Well, anyways, middle-of-the-night story time! Once upon a time, Eggman sent me to a world outside of space and time and blah, blah, blah, bad stuff, introducing paragraph thing, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not an author, just bear with me a second. So, then we all said goodbye, and god, that was probably the worst day of my life. Please, please never break down like that again. It freaks me out. Moving on, remember when we saved all of existence from the Time Eater thingy? Back then, we went to that strange timeless thing called a 'White World' or something. That's where I was stuck. There weren't even any colourless Zones to run around in. It was really. Really. Really. Boring. Stuff sucked! I just ran wherever I felt like. No idea how long I was in there. I swear it was years. And I never want to go back there, ever again."

"So, how did you get out?" Tails interrupted.

"Hey, I'm narrating," Sonic argued. "I'm just getting to that point. So, after who knows how long, I've been running for something like two hours. Does time exist outside of time? Nope, that hurts my brain, forget it. Suddenly, only a little in front of me, I see a flash, so I run over there. And you'll never believe who I saw. It was Silver! Yeah, seriously, it was Silver." He noticed Tails' expression of disbelief. "What? The dude time-travels all the time. Pun kind of intended. He brought me back to his time with him. He didn't know how to directly send me back to the present, or past, or whatever. That was fine with me, I just wanted to get out of there. So I literally spent a year with Silver, helping him to survive and not get set on fire. Blaze was there, too."

"Doesn't Blaze have her own dimension?"

"Yeah, I thought so, too. Apparently, she came to this world because whatever was causing Silver's time to be on fire everywhere threatened her dimension, so she had to help or something. Back to story time. Me, Silver and Blaze survived pretty well for a year, give or take. Then there was the day when we found a Chaos Emerald. Yep! Chaos Emeralds don't care if they're possibly going to get incinerated, apparently they're indestructible. Or something. Silver used it to send me back, and here we are. But apparently, he screwed up by five years. And that brings you up to speed. Sorry for narrating so much."

Tails spent a minute taking everything in. His best friend was back after five years, and he'd lived in the future for a while. "I think I get it," he confirmed after some time. "But you didn't explain everything. What about your…" He looked at Sonic, pausing at the parts of his body that transformed into robotics.

Sonic didn't make eye contact with Tails. He looked down at his right arm, or rather the metal that had replaced it. "That's another long story. Look, how about you do the storytelling for a while? I need to know everything that's happened since I left. What happened? Where's everyone else?"

"Okay, I guess. Here goes nothing," Tails began. "Well… after people thought you died, everything went crazy. I hardly understood what was happening back then, because I was too scared to focus… From what I remember, it was just depression and tributes and stuff everywhere. People even established a 'Sonic Day' public holiday for you. The entire world pretty much just went crazy over it."

"Right," Sonic said. _Wow, sounds like people really freaked out. Damn you, Eggman!_ "And what about everyone else? Amy, Knux, Shad?"

Sighing, Tails looked at the floor. "Shadow left really quick. I think that losing two friends in a row was too much. He's with G.U.N. now, and I have no idea where he went. Knuckles is back on Angel Island, guarding the Master Emerald-" he made air quotes with his fingers – "'for good this time'. I keep trying to call him, but he never answered. In other words, he's still just as stubborn. Amy stayed with me for about six months, but then we argued. Like, really badly. And she left, and I never saw or heard from her again."

"Hey, whoa-whoa-whoa _wait a freaking second_." Sonic held up his hands. "So, it's been five years. Five. Years. And aside from the first half a year, you've been alone the whole time?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

"That's crazy!" Sonic looked deeply concerned. "Didn't you ever go anywhere?" Tails shook his head, which only served to freak Sonic out further. "Dude! You can't just lock yourself up forever with some of my old stuff. You've gotta get out once in a while and have fun."

Tails was quick to start reasoning. "I didn't have anyone to go and hang out with, anyway. And I wanted to make you come back, so I stayed here and kept working. I made a bunch of new stuff, too, and I was fine. And if you came back, I wanted to be there. See, you just being here right now proves my point. What if at this very moment, I was messing around on some barely-inhabited island in the middle of the ocean?"

"You are on a barely-inhabited island in the middle of the ocean. That's the literal definition of South Island," Sonic pointed out.

"…Whatever. My point is, I had to stay here. I didn't want to leave, I couldn't leave."

"Ugh. Screw it, this doesn't really matter. I was five years too late to make you keep having a social life. I get it. So, anything else about how things have been going? Like, in the world or just personally."

"I guess I've been kind of lonely. But it was okay! I was fine. I mainly invented random machines and played computer games." Tails gave Sonic a strange look. "And speaking of machines… would it kill you to just explain? Please?"

Sonic sighed. "Okay, fine. Short version: A couple of days after Silver came and saved me, it started. My arm began turning grey, and it spread like crazy. Uh, Eggman went over that aspect of his evil plan, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Right, just checking. You try spending forever in a colourless void and see what that does to your memory. …That makes me sound really old. Anyways, like I was saying, it spread pretty quickly. Then, one day about a week later, I lost control." He closed his eyes. The memory was a painful one. "I couldn't restrain myself. Blaze held me still, and Silver did some sort of psychic thingy. Once it wore off and I could actually move, I was fine. Every now and then, I'd freak out again, and Silver always did his thing. I reckon that whenever he used it on me, for some reason… this… slowed down, so I stayed mostly in control for the whole time. But we could never tell when it was coming, so it was always kinda terrifying. I don't know if it'll speed up again now." He stopped briefly, probably to calm himself down. A few deep breaths later, he kept going. "Another thing – when we found that Chaos Emerald, as soon as I touched it, I went back to normal a little. Before we found it, my left arm was almost completely… like this. So clearly, the Chaos Emeralds are gonna play some kind of part in this. Then again, they always do something important."

Tails looked worried. "That sounds… I don't know, bad."

"Definitely." Sonic's tone indicated that he was ending the discussion. "Well… I missed you and the others. I'm sorry I had to leave like that."

"I guess it had to happen that way," Tails admitted. "But hey, you're here now, right?"

Sonic smiled. "Yeah, you're right. What happened to the days when I was the one telling you that everything's gonna be alright?"

"Sonic, I'm fourteen now."

"Whoa! It's been that long? What am I saying, of course it has." Sonic put a friendly arm around Tails. "It's great to be back."

Meanwhile, deep underneath the ground, a computer screen flashed. Somebody gasped in surprise. "He made it out? How did he do that? Let's see what this says. Hmm… What? It's that far already? No way! I can't believe this! How has he gone undetected for so long?" A new message appeared on the computer. _INITIATE REMOTE CONTROL?_ A gloved hand stretched out and tapped a few keys. "Not right now… let's have him think it's all going to be happiness and rainbows. Perhaps tomorrow. Yes. Sonic the Hedgehog… it's been a while. But this time, I WILL emerge victorious! You can't stop me now." The sound of evil laughter rocked the small bunker.

"You can't even stop yourself."


	4. Chapter 4: Control

**Chapter 4 - Control**

 **Dear Quantum27: Hello again! I'm really happy that you like this. And yeah, the ruined future kind of has something to do with that, but no spoilers. "No way! I can't believe this!" was an intentional reference to Sonic Adventure, so I'm kinda relieved somebody picked up on that. I usually pack my story full of references, so be prepared. You say that he has no idea what he's going into, well, the amount of rightness in that statement is crazy… As for your final question, in Sonic Generations Sonic turned 16, and he spent a year in the future. Therefore, he is roughly 17 now. Well, thanks for the review, and glad you enjoy!**

 **Hey again! I think that either Fanfiction, the internet, my computer, or this specific story is messed up. Updates don't seem to always make themselves obvious, so I'm having to immediately delete and re-upload a chapter for it to show up. I don't know why, but I can't fix it. If you're following this, I recommend checking the story manually sometimes, otherwise this glitch might screw you over. Hey, Fanfiction admins? If you're reading this, could you maybe try and fix that sooner rather than later? Thanks. In other news, chapter 4, yay! This has already come further than any other fanfiction I've done. Thank you for reading! ALSO: (this is very important!) A paragraph here consists mostly of jumbled letters, numbers, and symbols. This is intentional. I did it for the purpose of the story, and each random symbol represents a letter. If you know the code, it makes sense. This isn't a problem with the story! Don't ask me to fix it! Speaking of which, I challenge you to translate it. Can you do it? (Don't worry if you can't.) I'll tell you all the answer in a future update. *checks length* Damn it! These notes are getting way past too long. Well, uh, extremely intense chapter ahead. I actually flipped out slightly writing this. Lol… Enjoy!**

The early morning sunlight shone through the window. A few of the rays caught Tails in the face, and he wearily opened his eyes. He sat up. There was quite a lot to do today. Fix the glitchy cable behind the TV, try to call Amy or Knuckles or Shadow again, and then, most importantly, get some more work done on his latest portal device for bringing Sonic home. Wait. Tails remembered the events of last night. Sonic was back! He got out of bed, pulled on his shoes, and almost ran into his living room, when he stopped himself. No… Sonic was probably still asleep. He had only appeared about six hours ago, and probably only got about five of sleep at most. Tails knew his best friend well, and he knew Sonic needed lots of sleep. So instead of racing to the makeshift bed on his couch and dragging its inhabitant out, he went through the cupboards until he found a half-full box of Fruit Rings. He quickly made and ate breakfast, then took out his Miles Electric and tried to make the calls.

Amy's number gave a 'no signal' message again. Trying to call Knuckles ended in the same 'Error 400 - Client Error' screen, alongside the typical 'Did you enter the wrong number?' Attempting to reach Shadow didn't work, either. The Miles Electric just rang out and went to voicemail as usual. Tails didn't leave a message. He had given up on that about three years ago. He slammed the device on the table in frustration. He had the best news ever to tell his friends, and yet they still wouldn't answer. Why did he even bother? Okay, well, he knew the answer to that one. He had been alone for nearly five years, so he just wanted somebody to talk to. You know what they say - old habits die hard. Tails glanced at the Miles Electric's on-screen clock. 9:57 AM. He couldn't stand any more waiting. For the love of Chaos, he was seeing his long-lost friend for the first time in 5 years! He turned off the communicator and made his way into the living room.

 _H3LL0 4G41N… $0N1C. C4N Y0U GU3$$ VVH0 1 4M? H3R3"$ 4 H1N7. 1 M4Y 83 0U7 0F 4C710N F0R N0VV, 8U7 1"M $71LL Y0UR VV0R$7 N1GH7M4R3. 1 4M $3ND1NG 7H1$ VV4RN1NG V14 Y0UR R08071C 1MPR0V3M3N7$. 1 D0 N07 C0N7R0L Y0UR 7H0UGH7$… Y37. H0VV3V3R, 1 C4N 1NFLU3NC3 Y0UR 4C710N$ $0M3VVH47. Y0U VV1LL F4LL C0MPL373LY UND3R MY C0N7R0L $00N. Y0U VV1LL 7URN 0N Y0UR FR13ND$, 4ND UNL3$$ Y0U $URR3ND3R Y0UR$3LF, 1 VV1LL 74K3 0V3R N07 JU$7 7H3 VV0RLD, 8U7 Y0UR 0VVN M1ND. M4Y 7H1$ 83 4 VV4RN1NG 70 Y0U… SONIC THE HEDGEHOG._

Sonic woke up to see Tails standing over him. He couldn't supress a smile. "Hey, Tails. How long have you been there?"

"Only a few minutes," Tails responded truthfully. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah." Sonic paused as if remembering something. "Although I swear I heard something a minute or two ago. It was like… I guess it was like a voice, and it was definitely telling me something, although I couldn't actually understand any of it. Except for the end, when… it? …said my name."

Tails looked concerned. "Do you think it means anything?"

"Nah." Sonic stood up. "Creepy voices talking in your dreams only ever mean something important in movies. I'm hungry. Do the cereal people still make Fruit Rings?"

xX*Xx

Half an hour passed. Over that time, Tails gave Sonic a more detailed explanation of the five years he had missed, showing him old reports and videos, as well as explaining the assortment of random gadgets lying around that he had invented over the years. "…So, anyway, this one is an electromagnetic pulse field generator, or EMP generator for short," he told his friend, holding out what looked like a remote with one button on the front and a tiny satellite dish on the end. "It's a device that temporarily interferes with and disables any nearby machinery. Kind of like a signal jammer, but way smaller. And this last one is a chemical magnet. You code in the chemical you want to find, and it'll draw in anything you want, even stuff that isn't metal. I'm still testing it, but it's looking promising so far."

"That's pretty cool," Sonic said, and he meant it. Well, at least from what he could tell in between Tails' meaningless scientific terms and technical words. "Didn't you say that you had a cord thingy you wanted to fix on your TV or something?"

"Oh, yeah!" Tails remembered. "I should probably do that sooner rather than later." He grabbed a toolbox and a roll of duct tape off of his work bench, then went into the living room again, Sonic following. As he began to work on something behind the television, he continued talking. "What should we do first? Now that you're back, we need a plan of some sort. Alert the world, reunite our team, and all that stuff."

Sonic began to list priorities. "Well, first we tell everyone that I'm not dead. It might make it easier to find Knuckles, Amy and Shadow, which is what we'll do next. After that, I guess we look for the Chaos Emeralds or something. Always handy to have those around."

Tails nodded before contributing. "And we need to work on getting you back to normal."

"Right," Sonic agreed. Neither he nor Tails said anything for a while. He looked at his metal hand again. There hadn't been any mention of it for the whole day, and honestly, he would've preferred it to have stayed that way. He didn't want it to become a priority - finding the rest of his friends was the most important thing here - but if it really was all down to Eggman, he would have to find some way to stop it. The last thing he wanted to do was lose control again and attack somebody. Shaking his head to clear it, Sonic pushed aside his thoughts on the matter and continued the conversation. "I reckon that our first stop should be Station Square to tell everybody in the world that I'm alive."

Wrapping about three metres of duct tape around some wires, Tails said, "That sounds like a pretty good plan. The Tornado is still working… I think. I haven't used it for years, though, so it might not be functioning properly. I hope it is." He stepped out from behind the TV, brushing dust off his arm. "Let me go to my workshop and make sure it's in flying condition. Be back in a few minutes."

xX*Xx

Sonic tapped his foot. Not really out of impatience, he had gained a lot more of that spending who-knows-how-long in a featureless white void, but more out of habit. His mind started wandering. What else had happened while he was gone? What was the same, and what was different? Things could change a lot in five years. Something suddenly snapped Sonic back into reality. He looked down. His right arm was shaking, as was his left leg. He tried to move them. They didn't respond to his thoughts.

"Oh, no." He knew what that meant. "Ooh, no… please no…"

Tails wiped another layer of dust off the wing of the Tornado. The plane was getting very old, and he hadn't used it in years. It hadn't let him down before, though, and he was sure that it wouldn't take long to restore it to perfection. He suddenly heard something - a voice.

"Tails! Look out!"

There was barely time for Tails to react before the door of his workshop burst open. Sonic was standing there, grabbing onto the doorframe. His mechanical arm and leg seemed to be ignoring him, fighting him even. A rocket had opened up in his left foot, going at full power, while his right arm was going crazy trying to get free. Tails instinctively jumped backwards. "What's going on?" he asked, trying not to freak out.

"I can't… I can't control it…" Sonic answered, most of his energy going towards restraining himself and not letting himself anywhere near his friend. He looked at Tails, a mixture of fear, worry and hopelessness in his eyes. "Do something! Just… just stop me!"

Tails turned around and searched his desk for some sort of invention which would help. He started panicking, with no idea how to save himself without hurting Sonic. "Something like what?" he asked.

Sonic's right hand began to pull the fingers of his left off of the doorframe. "I don't know! Um… Find something that disables robot stuff!" He grabbed harder. "And hurry up, because this is getting really hard!"

"Oh, I know!" Tails had an idea. He picked up random objects until he found what he was looking for. "Remember how I was going over this EMP device? That should work!" He pushed the button on the front, and the remote-like machine came to life. It powered up painfully slowly. Tails shook it desperately. "Come on, hurry up!"

Despite his efforts, Sonic couldn't hold on any longer. His hand slipped off of the doorframe, and he suddenly shot forward. "MOVE!" he shouted to Tails, a second too late. His uncontrollable fist hit Tails in the stomach. The fox instinctively stepped back, doubled over. The device in his hand fell to the floor. Sonic gasped. "NO!"

The EMP machine finally decided to work. It vibrated, and a high-pitched noise pierced the air. Sonic stopped moving and collapsed, breathing heavily. Tails ran to him as fast as he could with one hand on his stomach. "Are you alright?" he asked, bending down so that he was at Sonic's eye level.

"I…" Sonic pushed himself up to a sitting position with his one good hand. He couldn't look at Tails – he had attacked his friend, and it was hurting him. "I-I'm sorry…"

"Hey, it's cool. I'm okay," Tails quickly reassured him. "I just hope I didn't hurt you."

Sonic took a deep breath. "I'll be fine in a few minutes." _Don't worry. He wasn't hurt. …You didn't hurt him._ "It's just, well… that time was different." Tails didn't respond, so Sonic kept going. "Usually my arm just swings around randomly trying to make contact with something. This time, it was way more efficient. It's like something or someone was actually controlling it."

"Hmm…" Tails thought about it for all of fifteen seconds, but didn't find anything. "I don't know what it could be. You said that once you can move properly again, you're fully in control?" Sonic nodded. "Okay, well, that's all that matters for now. Want to talk about something else?"

"Out of all the ideas you've had over our adventures, and the bajillion more ideas you inevitably had while I was gone, that's got to be one of the best ones so far."

Tails stood up and walked over to his desk. He picked up his laptop, unplugged it, and brought it back with him. He sat down again and opened a program. "Check out what I spent about two years doing," he said. The computer loaded up a map of the world. Tails tapped the screen, and it responded to his touch. Seven colourful markers - red, blue, yellow, green, grey, cyan and purple - appeared on the map at various locations around the world. "So, you see these marker thingies?" Tails began. "Each one represents the exact location of a Chaos Emerald, down to the nearest few kilometres. I managed to pinpoint where they went after you… left. And if we go on an adventure to find them, which we probably will because we always do something like that, we already know where to look. And even if we don't need them…" Tails clicked something and held down a key. The markers cycled through colours at the speed of light. "…They still have pretty colours!"

Sonic laughed. "This is made of win. In the future, do most people have computer programs that create rainbows of Chaos Emerald locations?"

"No, but if that was an app, I would totally buy it."

"Definitely." Sonic looked at the map. "Hmm… This one is in the Mystic Ruins. So if we go to Station Square and tell everyone I'm back, then we can instantly go from there."

"Sounds like a plan!" Tails agreed. "It won't be long before I can start up the Tornado. We'll go from there, and figure stuff out as everything unfolds."

"Yeah, that works." Sonic moved the fingers on his right hand. "Okay, I think I can move again now. Are you gonna need help?" Tails stood up and extended a hand, which Sonic took. "Thanks."

Tails smiled. "No problem. I reckon I can get the Tornado flying by myself. So, it's tell the world, get the Emeralds, and find our team, although not definitely in that order. Correct?"

"Correct. Let's do it to it!"

 **Well, there you go! Another chapter. I'm gonna be honest with you all: writing this chapter freaked me out. Then again, if I panicked writing this, future chapters are going to be hell to write. What have I done to myself? You know what, I don't care. Also, just out of curiosity, if there was actually an app that created rainbows all over the planet, would you buy it? I would totally buy that. Well, I'm rambling. Hope you enjoyed! Zosonils out!**


	5. Chapter 5: Station Square

**Chapter 5 – Station Square**

 **Dear Quantum27: It's okay, I don't expect anybody to have any idea what that said. I know, if it's freaking me out, I shouldn't be writing it. But I've got a good idea for a story, and I'm not going to ruin it by toning it down too much. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually. Well, thanks for the review (again).**

 **Dear angry hater112: Misleading names, amirite? Well, to put something on the site, just write it on your computer with Word or any text formatting program, then use the document manager and either upload the whole thing or use the copy-and-paste option if you don't want to put the whole thing up there at once. I'm glad you enjoy the story. :)**

 **Five chapters! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! What's that? You say that I'm the one writing this? Yes, but the support from all of YOU has motivated me to keep going. Therefore, YOU ARE AWESOME, I WAS RIGHT! Here, everyone have some REALLY DELICIOUS COOKIES! *gives out internet cookies***

 **I'm pleased to say that I've decided on theme songs for this! YAY! :D I chose a song that fits how every character acts in-story, and their song will be announced when they come into the story. (If I told you all of them now, it'd be character spoilers, and I might change my mind anyways.) As stated in the description, the theme for the entire story is Broken, a track that would've been used in Shadow the Hedgehog, but the singer was like 'NOPE'. Of course, somebody went along and found it. Search 'Broken Shadow the Hedgehog' and you'll find it. Sonic's theme song in the story is What I'm Made Of from Sonic Heroes. I thought that the entire song was PERFECT for him and his story here. For Tails, it's Back in Time. However, I'm not talking about the original Sonic R version, but the remix from the amazing fan-film Sonic Prologue. Make sure you're listening to the remix, and while you're at it, watch Sonic Prologue! It'll be the BEST 20 minutes of YouTube you've EVER watched! PM me if you want a full explanation on why I chose these songs, which I won't do here because it'd be REALLY FREAKING LONG. SO MUCH CAPS LOCK, AAH!**

 **Well, I need to stop writing so many author notes. They get way too long! I'm gonna end them right here. Thank you for reading, and I hope you like the fifth chapter!**

Tails stepped back from the Tornado. "All done!" he announced. "The Tornado is back in action. I'm gonna get some stuff, then I guess we can take off." As he grabbed some of his possessions and put them in the plane, he looked towards Sonic, who was using his laptop for something. "Hey, what have you been doing on there?"

"I was just searching for myself on the internet," Sonic responded. "Didn't find anything except for a Ringpedia page, a five year old news report about me dying, more news, and a fan-made video which… look, you should probably shut down the whole internet, just to be on the safe side. Anyway, let's do it to it!"

The two got into the plane. Tails sat in the driver's seat, ready to take off, and Sonic stood on the wing, just like usual. With the press of a button, the Tornado's motor started. The propeller whirred around at super speed. Tails pushed on the control stick, and the plane rolled forwards and out of the workshop. It came away from the ground, gaining altitude and soaring over South Island. Sonic looked down at his old home. It was just as he remembered - the emerald green grass, rolling hills, almost completely hidden caves, chequered dirt, and everything else that made the island unique. "It's still beautiful," he said to himself.

"What was that?" Tails asked. "I can't hear you over the engine."

"Nothing," Sonic replied in a more normal tone. He took one last look at South Island before the Tornado rose even higher and it vanished beneath a cover of clouds.

xX*Xx

After an hour of flying, Station Square finally came into view. Tails pressed some button or other, and the Tornado dropped down to just above the ground. He turned around and parked neatly by the side of a building. Several passers-by stopped and looked. Tails hadn't been seen in town for years, but seeing the plane's other passenger was what truly sparked everyone's interest. Sonic couldn't resist waving. There was a collective gasp from the crowd. An awkward silence intensified as more people gathered to find out what was so interesting. After a minute, Sonic broke the tension. "Um… Hi!" he started.

A cheer rose from the crowd, along with a few comments along the lines of "He's back!" or "It's Sonic THE Hedgehog!" or "He isn't dead?!" Sonic laughed. People in general hadn't changed a bit since he had left. "I didn't even make a motivational speech yet," he said. "Yes, you're all seeing this right. It's not a giant group hallucination. That would be seriously weird on so many levels. This is the real Sonic the Hedgehog, and I'm back! I know I've been away for a while, and I get that I'm slightly different, but it's still me!"

Tails climbed out of the seat, trying not to break down with happiness. Nobody knew how amazing that sounded to him, hearing his long-lost best friend openly tell the world that he had returned. He quickly pulled himself together. "Does anyone know if we can speak to somebody who could spread the news?" he asked.

"The news station is up that street. Turn right at the first chance you get and you'll see it," a young woman offered. "I'll tell everybody I know, as well!" Several people called out their agreement, and some got their phones out right away.

"Thanks!" Sonic grinned, earning an excited reaction from the crowd. "Come on, Tails, let's go! There's no time to lose!" He gave one last thumbs-up to the group of people before taking off, Tails running as fast as possible behind him.

Sonic came to a stop in front of the news station. A second later, Tails showed up, closely following him. He walked inside as the automatic doors opened for him and stopped at the secretary's desk. "Hey!" he said. "Breaking news: Sonic the Hedgehog isn't dead. Where am I supposed to go?"

The secretary gasped in surprise. She looked closely at Sonic, barely able to believe what was happening. She hurriedly resumed her businesslike manner. "I think we should call in the manager for this." She turned around and picked up the phone. "Excuse me? May I speak to my boss? Thank you. Hello! You need to come down here, right away. What? No, this has nothing to do with that! I'm not going to ask you out again, okay?! This is far more important! We have news regarding Sonic the Hedgehog. He's back. I said, he's back. Of course I'm serious! Why would I joke about that? Exactly. Yes, he's in here right now! I said, it isn't a joke! Yes, you'd better come here quickly! Why did this take so long? I suppose it is hard to believe. Well, I'm going to hang up now. Be quick!" She put the phone back and turned to address Sonic and Tails. "He'll just be a minute."

Within a minute, the elevator on the other side of the room opened. A man in his thirties walked out. Upon seeing Sonic and Tails, he grinned like an excited child. "Hey, it is you!" he exclaimed. "This will be the greatest report in years! We can't just wait here for the news to come on! Samara, call in a film crew and reporter, we have to tell the world right now!"

And so, moments later, Sonic and Tails found themselves standing in an interview room with cameras staring at them from every angle and a reporter firing questions at them. "The past five years have been notably different from when you were around. So tell me, Sonic, how exactly did you survive and slip under the radar for all this time?" she asked.

"I was stuck in a weird world that exist outside of time and space," Sonic explained. "All I knew was that everything was white and boring and nothing existed. I don't know how long I was actually in there, or if that even makes sense… Tails, can you help me out here?"

"To put it in simple terms, Sonic was trapped in a world where the passage of time does not exist," Tails jumped in. "It denies our understanding and can't be explained without violating about a million laws of physics and quantum effects and all of that. It's like trying to divide a number by zero, except instead of breaking your calculator and crashing your phone, it breaks space-time and crashes the universe. The furthest we can comfortably understand is that time does not exist, and space is infinite."

"Yeah, sure. What he said," Sonic continued. "So, anyway, I was stuck there for I don't even know, then some time travel stuff happened. I visited the future, then got sent back to this world. But obviously, something screwed up along the way, because I've missed out on what could have been five years of my life."

The reporter nodded. "Good to know. Was it a difficult time to get through?"

"Oh, yeah." Sonic sighed, not liking the memory. "All the time, I was wishing that I was back here, hanging out with my friends, doing normal stuff. But, well, I guess nobody can change the way things ended up turning out. And hey, at least I did end up coming back, right?"

"Yes, you're right. And what about the appearance change?"

Sonic couldn't stop the instinctive glance downwards. He knew exactly what the reporter meant. This was his first time in public for a while. The thought of how some people might react once the initial excitement over his return wasn't an enjoyable one. And it was only going to get worse as time went on. Only that day, he had let it take over, and if for some reason he lost control and something really serious happened, and he had caused it… He pushed the thought away firmly. "Well, it's… complicated," he said, "but we're working on it. I haven't really changed. I'm still the same, super-fast, tons-of-attitude, totally awesome Sonic the Hedgehog."

"Anything you want to say to the public before we wrap this up?"

"Yeah, actually." Sonic smiled. "You're all awesome people, and it's good to be back."

xX*Xx

Sonic and Tails left the building. Wherever they walked, people turned to look at them. The news must have gotten out very quickly, because the reaction was awesome. People were gasping and cheering left, right and centre. Several times, somebody would stop to take a photograph, and within minutes the whole scenario was all over the internet. After a while, the attention started to slightly annoy Sonic (something he never thought would happen to him). He didn't know why, it was just irritating having people stare at him, even if it was for a good reason. Maybe he was just getting unnaturally self-conscious. Tails must have noticed his friend's discomfort, because he quickly jumped to the rescue. "Well, we should be going, huh?" he said. "I think we should catch the train to the Mystic Ruins so that we can try to find the Chaos Emerald."

"Good idea," Sonic replied, sighing in relief mentally. "Let's go."

So they made their way to the train station and caught the next train to the Mystic Ruins. As the outside world zipped by in a blur, Sonic asked, "So, why do we always take the train? I could run anywhere easily, but you always get me to go in this metal tube."

"It's so that I know you won't get sidetracked," Tails answered. "Every time I told you to run, you'd find some way to distract yourself and be late."

"After all these years, that finally makes sense."

They arrived at the Mystic Ruins fairly soon. Tails pulled his Miles Electric out from who knows where. "I've set this up to track the electromagnetic output of the Chaos Emerald," he explained. "When we're close to it, my Miles Electric will pick up the energy signal. It'll start to make a beeping noise once we get to a certain distance from it, then the sound will increase in frequency the closer it is until we find it."

"Okay, pretend for a second that I didn't understand anything that came after 'electro-thing', except for something about beeps," Sonic said.

Tails held back a facepalm. "My M.E. will find out if we're close to the Chaos Emerald. The faster it beeps, the closer we are. Eventually, we should find it."

"Oh. That makes much more sense. Let's do this!"

xX*Xx

Elsewhere, a gloved hand began to tap at a computer. Its owner growled at the constant error messages. "Come on, you damned thing, control him already!" He banged on the desk in frustration. "Never mind. Let's turn on the geo-tracking…" A map of the world appeared on the screen. A red light began to flash in the area of the Mystic Ruins. "Oh, so he wishes to collect the Emeralds, does he? Well, two can play at that game…" Two more clicks, and a communications window popped up. "Sniper? Do you read me?"

Silence. Then somebody spoke on the other end. " _Loud and clear, boss man. What do you want?_ "

"Ah, good, you're there. Did you see the breaking news just minutes ago?"

" _Yeah. Sonic's back. Not great for you, huh? Five years, and you've barely changed him. I gotta be honest with you, this plan isn't going great._ "

"Shut up, Sniper. He's going after a Chaos Emerald. I can't remotely control his actions right now. Now I wish I hadn't used my opportunity so quickly… look, the point is that I need you to track him, follow him to the Emerald, and take it. Bring it back to me immediately. If possible, try to use that special shot I explained to you. And yes, I will pay you."

" _Hmm… yeah, that sounds about right. I'll be done in a jiffy, boss man. Mystic Ruins, right?_ "

"Correct. Now go!"

 **I'm going to leave the story here. Sorry this took so long, but I was working on other stuff. I'll try and get more done quickly! You're all brilliant people. Thanks for the support! Please leave a review and stay awesome! I'll see you all next chapter! :D**

 **Also, I will now translate the messed-up paragraph of 6yi$iuer0Gu4G5g2tqw91 (I have no idea what I just typed) from last chapter.**

 ** _HELLO AGAIN… SONIC. CAN YOU GUESS WHO I AM? HERE'S A HINT. I MAY BE OUT OF ACTION FOR NOW, BUT I'M STILL YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE. I AM SENDING THIS WARNING VIA YOUR ROBOTIC IMPROVEMENTS. I DO NOT CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS… YET. HOWEVER, I CAN INFLUENCE YOUR ACTIONS SOMEWHAT. YOU WILL FALL COMPLETELY UNDER MY CONTROL SOON. YOU WILL TURN ON YOUR FRIENDS, AND UNLESS YOU SURRENDER YOURSELF, I WILL TAKE OVER NOT JUST THE WORLD, BUT YOUR OWN MIND. MAY THIS BE A WARNING TO YOU… SONIC THE HEDGEHOG._**

 **Mwah ha hah, creepiness.**

 **…I am a crazy, crazy human being.**


	6. Chapter 6: Here We Go Again

**Chapter 6 - Here We Go Again**

 **Finally! After a long, long, long, long, l-** ** _Sonic: Get to the point!_** **Okay, fine. After a long, long,** **etcetera** ***glares at Sonic* wait, we're back! At last, I have published… CHAPTER SIX OF LEGACY! *partying intensifies* I've been working on this whenever I could, mainly at school (don't tell my teachers) and borrowing other people's computers, and so this story is back in action! :D** ** _This chapter is pretty cool. We've put in plenty of action, and we finally learn-_** **No spoilers! D:** ** _Okay, okay._** **Well, I-** ** _Uh, you mean we._** ***sigh* Fair enough. WE hope you like this! We now return to your regularly scheduled author's notes:**

 **Dear suicuneluvr: I'm glad you enjoy this! Here's your chapter 6. The update schedule is messy, but I'm trying to write regularly. I have some awesome reactions planned. Thank you for the review! :D**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Some more reading for you! ^^ Thanks for your support, and I hope you like this chapter! :)**

 **Okay, chapter time again! If you're observant, you know that between the last update and now, I changed the rating to T. If you aren't, you just scrolled up to check. I freaking know what you are thinking. This was purely for the sake of safety, as I am not sure if this will at some point get too extreme for K plus. As I get further into the story, it'll almost certainly get darker, there'll be more violence (but minimal blood. I don't do blood), and the use of 'damn' and 'hell' will become more frequent. I don't plan on ever writing a fanfic with adult content. The T is just because I'm paranoid.**

 **Anyways, sorry this chapter took so long! As I explained, my laptop broke. Unfortunately, it isn't fixed yet, so updates will still be slow, but a family member let me use their laptop for the time being, so thank you, family member. I won't name you for safety reasons, but you know who you are. :) It was driving me insane not being able to write, but I kind of worked on it in my head, and I actually have a fairly solid plot now. I still have a few holes to fill in, but I know vaguely how it ends and how we'll get there. So, there's that to make up for the long wait, I guess…**

 **Also, you know how at the start I said that I didn't like the name Legacy and wanted to change it? Well, I decided screw it. I've kinda grown to like the name, and people are telling me it's good. So, unless I think of something absolutely incredible at some point, 'Legacy' is here to stay.**

 **I'm ranting now. Gotta shut up fast. This is chapter six! Read it! I hope you like it!**

Sonic and Tails had barely began to walk aimlessly around the Mystic Ruins when the Miles Electric started to make a beeping sound. They were at the closed, rusty gates that led to the minecart track going into the jungle. The minecart itself was gone, presumably removed when the expeditions using it had stopped. The two heroes stood, looking at the entrance and doing absolutely nothing in a very dramatic fashion for about three seconds. Tails stepped forward and started pushing the gates. They opened about a centimetre. He kicked them in frustration, and they moved another centimetre. "Will you freaking open already?!"

"Here, let me try," Sonic offered. He grabbed the gates with his right hand and pushed. With a firm shove, they finally opened just enough for a hedgehog and a fox to fit through. He smiled and took a step back. "There we go."

They walked along the tracks and came to the ladder leading down into the jungle. Sonic jumped, falling through trees, and grabbed onto the ladder just before he hit the ground and shattered his ankles. Tails climbed down for the first metre, then decided to fly instead. All the time, his Miles Electric beeped louder and faster. The two walked around the jungle, following the tracker sounds. Fifteen minutes or so passed without success. "I think I've figured something out," Sonic said after some time.

"What is it?" Tails asked, assuming that his friend had suddenly realised something important.

"We're lost."

Tails couldn't help but laugh. "Was that supposed to be a joke?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I thought that after all this time, you would've at least come up with some even slightly good puns."

"Nope. They're all still just as lame as ever." Sonic looked around. "But seriously, I think we're lost. If memory serves, we've been to this exact same area like six times."

"This whole place looks the same," Tails pointed out. The M.E. started to go insane with its noises. "Oh, we're getting closer!"

Meanwhile, an unnoticed figure watched the friends from afar. He smiled. "Keep looking, heroes," he muttered. "Lead me right to that Chaos Emerald."

xX*Xx

Sonic and Tails pushed through some trees. They came to a stop in front of a huge temple. Its stone walls were cracked and worn down, and vines had begun to cover it, but it had obviously looked incredible before falling into ruin. Right up on top of it was a glowing green gem - a Chaos Emerald. "Sweet! That was easy!" Sonic said brightly. He went to climb the steps of the temple, continuing, "Let's grab the Emerald and get out of here."

He took a step forward. There was a bang, and right where he had been a split second ago, a bullet was embedded in the temple.

Tails gasped. "Sonic! Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Didn't touch me," Sonic reassured him. He turned around to where the bullet had come from. "Who's there?" he shouted. "Show yourself!"

Somebody walked out from bushes. He was a purple weasel with dark violet eyes, wearing a belt and a brown hat, and holding a gun. When he saw that Sonic was fine, he swore loudly. "I thought I got you that time!" he said. "Well, better take you out, or I won't get paid. It's been a while, Sonic the Hedgehog." He smirked. "Now, we've got history, so I'll give you a choice just this once. Either get out of here and give me that Emerald, or fight me for it."

Sonic stared for a moment, then looked surprised. "Hey, Fang, is that you?" he asked.

Fang nodded, smiling. "Nice to see that you remember me. Honestly, I can't wait to beat you up again. It'll be a nice throwback to that one time in Casino Night. Remember us battling it out? That was fun. Probably would've been more fun if you had returned my snarky comments, though. Actually, when did you learn how to talk?"

"Don't worry, Fang. I'll be sure to join in on the banter this time," Sonic promised.

"Cool. I mean, seriously. What's the point of fighting someone if they won't even return your trash talking? Actually, your complete silence was probably even more infuriating… Anyways, now I can hear you begging for me to spare you as I hold you at point blank range. I remember how the first time I did that, you just kind of stared at me. Awkward."

"I also remember how after staring at you for a couple seconds, I got up, took that cork gun off you and shot you with it," Sonic reminded his old adversary.

Fang went red. "Shut up. The joke's on you, this time. No more cork gun. This thing-" he held up his gun - "is loaded with real bullets now."

Tails interrupted. "While I'm sure you two are enjoying your little throwback, can we get back to the matter at hand?"

"Oh, yeah." Sonic folded his arms. "About your offer… I'm gonna go with 'fight you for it'. See, we kinda need that Emerald, and I'm not giving it up that easily." Before the weasel could react, he ran at Fang, curling into a Spin Dash and landing a perfect hit. Growling, Fang reached for his gun, but Sonic was moving too fast for him to see. The hedgehog smirked. "Well? Take your best 'shot'! Haha, gun jokes…"

With a constant bang sound, Fang shot wildly, but never hit Sonic. Tails crouched down by the temple, praying silently not to be hit. The weasel was reloading when Sonic slammed into him again, knocking him into the stone wall. Picking up his dropped gun, Fang seemed to put something else in it before firing. The bullet went right for the back of Sonic's head. As perhaps the luckiest coincidence ever, the blue hedgehog turned at just the right moment, and the shot hit one of the spines that had been changed into metal, shattering. Sonic still felt the impact, and he fell over. Tails screamed, unable to tell if his friend had survived. "NO!"

"Don't worry, Tails!" Sonic yelled. He looked back at Fang, his trademark cocky grin vanishing. "Okay, that wasn't cool, dude. I get that you're trying to kill me, but you can't just shoot a guy while his back is turned."

For some reason, Fang didn't seem too upset that Sonic was alive. "Hey, I gave you a choice. You should've surrendered. However, if it makes you happy, I'll aim for your chest instead of your back or something like that. I dunno."

"How can you be so calm about shooting someone?"

Fang pulled his gun out again. "I've been hired to do all kinds of things over the years. Assassination isn't as much of a big deal anymore. I'm being paid to get that Chaos Emerald off you, and if I have to shoot you, then sure." He realised that Sonic was struggling to keep a straight face. "What's so funny?"

Sonic had noticed the person sneaking up behind his foe - Fang hadn't. The hedgehog laughed. "You mean you haven't already noticed? I can't even come up with a pun that'll do this justice. Just turn around."

Tails was standing behind Fang. As soon as he turned his head, Tails punched him square in the face. The weasel fell over, clutching his eye. "Ow! You little…"

The fox, breathing heavily, ignored the insult. He bent down to Sonic's level and started panicking. "Are you okay? Where did it hit you? Will you survive? We need to get help! Does it hurt? Uh…" He held up three fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up? Can you still hear me? Do you remember my name? What happened? Does-"

"Tails." Sonic held up a hand. "Calm the hell down, please. Also, you're holding up three fingers."

Tails looked like the last thing he was ready to do was calm down. "Calm down? I saw you get shot in the head, and you're telling me to calm the hell down? Did the bullet damage your brain or something?"

Sonic suddenly realised what was going on. It should have been obvious. From where Tails had been, there would be no way to tell that he hadn't been even slightly hurt. He facepalmed at his own stupidity. "Ooh, right. Of course, that's what you're talking about. This is gonna sound crazy, but I don't think it left a single mark on me." He ran a hand through his quills. "I think it hit something metal and broke. I'm fine."

"You're… you aren't…" Tails took a deep breath. "Are you absolutely certain that you haven't been injured in any way?"

Sonic nodded. "Positive. In fact…" He reached down and picked up some metal fragments. "See? Shattered. Speaking of shattered, did you literally just punch Fang right in his face?! That was freaking awesome!" He stood up. "So, Fang, what's it feel like to be beaten up _again_?"

Fang looked up. One of his eyes had already begun to swell up. "What the hell just happened?" he asked. "No, really, would somebody please explain how I got screwed over by some ten year old kid?"

"I'm fourteen," Tails reminded him.

"Close enough," Fang growled. "Okay, I've had enough playing nice." He reached for his gun, but Sonic immediately recognised the action and grabbed it. The hedgehog pointed the pistol at Fang's head. The weasel backed away and raised his hands.

"Funny how you're sick of playing nice," Sonic commented. "Because so am I."

xX*Xx

The hedgehog stared menacingly at Fang. "Now, I don't want to use this thing. What do you say to a deal – you answer our questions, and I let you go."

Fang knew when he was beaten. "Okay, okay, fine. Just don't ask me about that bullet I shot you wi- …damn it!"

Sonic smiled a little. "What was that bullet you shot me with?"

"Honestly, I don't know the science-y part of it. I do know, however, that the person who sent me here gave me a special bullet. Apparently, if that so much as touches you, it'll make it a lot easier for my boss to take control over you. …You know what I'm talking about."

"Why is everybody being all politically correct about this?" Sonic asked. "It's not even… Whatever. Question two. Why do you want the Chaos Emerald?"

"I _need_ that Chaos Emerald. Not, like, I want it because it's shiny, but as in, I actually need to give it to somebody. You guys were looking for it, so I decided to let you lead me to it."

"Okay. Third question. Who are you working for?"

Fang winced. "Uh… pass."

"No passing."

"You suck. Fine. I'm working for somebody who's been your enemy for a long time. You thought you had gotten rid of him, but he's still out there, and he is _really_ peed off that you aren't dead yet."

Sonic and Tails both knew who Fang was talking about. "Eggman," they said simultaneously.

"Ding ding ding! Correct!" Fang confirmed. "So… yeah. Eggman's trying to take over the world again. And this time, it's different." He looked Sonic in the eyes. "He doesn't have any resources left. He's hiring anyone he can find to do his dirty work, but he knows that he's screwed at this rate. All of his hopes are pinned on you. The probability of you becoming one of his minions is the only reason he's going through with this. So don't mess up. Seriously, don't. I don't want the world taken over. I was just in it for the money. And now I'm not even gonna get paid for this…"

"Okay," Sonic interrupted. "I get it. You've said enough. You can go." He put Fang's gun on the ground and stepped on it, crushing it beyond use.

Fang looked mildly irritated. "That thing was expensive," he complained, before turning and walking away.

Sonic and Tails watched him leave. Once they were sure he was gone, Sonic pointed up at the Chaos Emerald. "Care to do the honours, Tails?"

"Sure!" Tails agreed. He flew up to the top of the temple, where the green jewel lay. He picked it up and flew down again. "Didn't you say that the Chaos Emeralds help restore you to normal?" Tails asked. Sonic nodded, so he continued, "Well, here. Take it." He held out the emerald.

Sonic picked the jewel up with his right hand. The Chaos Emerald shone brighter than ever, the green light blinding its holders temporarily. Sonic felt something in his arm, like his own power overcoming the one that had changed him. When the light cleared, Sonic had changed. The metal replacing his right arm had stopped a little past his shoulder, leaving the rest of it looking as if nothing had happened. Sonic looked down and smiled. "Awesome." He flexed his fingers. "Man, this feels good."

Tails smiled, seeing his friend somewhat back to normal. It was like a small part of the Sonic he had known years ago had returned. "Well, let's get going," he said. "We should try and find our way out of this place before it gets dark."

"Good idea."

xX*Xx

From his secret bunker deep underground, Dr. Eggman banged on his keyboard furiously. He opened his communications and called Fang. "Sniper!" he shouted into the computer.

" _Oh, hey, boss man."_

"What the hell are you doing?! First you fail to kill Sonic, then you get beaten up by some kid at least seven years younger than you, then you tell the hedgehog and his friend that I'm still trying to destroy them, and you don't even bring back the Emerald I sent you there for in the first place! Why did you tell them everything, you idiot? I swear, when I find you…"

 _"_ _Hey, they had me at gunpoint! And I screwed everything up, so it's not like you were gonna pay me anyway. Remember, I'm not working for you. I'm working for your money."_

"I hate you, Sniper."

 _"_ _I know you do. And why do you always call me 'Sniper'? You could call me Fang like everyone else."_

"All my workers get code names. Deal with it."

 _"_ _Look, at least I shot Sonic with your science bullet. Doesn't that mean he's gonna start becoming a robot way faster now? You should be happy that I at least got that right."_

"…good point… Well, anyway, you're fired."

 _"_ _Thought so."_

Fang disconnected from the call with one last _beep_. Eggman pulled at his moustache in frustration. "I hate that hedgehog…" he growled. He clicked some more buttons on his computer. A 3D model of a Sonic-like robot appeared on the screen, and a number showed up next to it: _19%_. The villain stared at it. "It's reversed? Oh, of course the damn thing is reversing. Of course he found a way to return to normal! Those bloody Chaos Emeralds… only wanting to react with living beings… stupid glowing rocks…" He closed the image in frustration. "Calm down, Ivo. You've managed to increase the rate at which the hedgehog will become one of yours. Just let it progress a little further, take control for a while, and repeat."

He continued muttering darkly to himself. Every now and then, he would laugh evilly at the thought of his plan. As the sun set, the doctor went over his plans constantly, plotting restlessly.

"Yes… You have no idea what you're getting into, hedgehog. HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

 **And there you have it. Lots of Sonic the Fighters references in this one. (In fact, the chapter name itself was a reference. 'Here We Go' is the name of the song that plays in Casino Night, where you fight Fang.) I hope the fight scene was good. I'm not really great at action, but I tried. I have the feeling that I got something wrong. I've never even seen a gun, so I may have made a stupid mistake. Hope not. Again, sorry for taking so long to publish. I'll try my best to keep writing. I'm working on this whenever I can. Thank you for continuing to read this! :) Please leave a review, it's greatly appreciated, and I'll see y'all next chapter!**

 **Also, I just checked out the stats. MORE THAN A THOUSAND VIEWS? WHAT THE HELL? THAT'S FRIGGIN' AWESOME! I LOVE YOU GUYS! (Not like** ** _that_** **. I don't even know you. But really, you all rock.)**


	7. Chapter 7: Old Friends

**Chapter 7: Old Friends**

 **Dear Quantum27: Yeah… that'd be pretty terrifying. I don't think the spin dash would deflect actual bullets. Well, thanks for your support as usual. :)**

 **Dear iidaemii03: Please don't die o.o I'm happy that you like this so much. I'm sort of into those kinds of stories too, although it's hard to come across a really good one. Judging by your reaction, I guess this is a good one? Hope so. Anyways, thank you for the review. :)**

 **Chapter time again! My laptop finally got fixed, so hopefully updates will become more frequent. This time, I don't actually have bucketloads of author's notes I want to write. STRANGE, ISN'T IT? (Sorry, I had to.) Not much has happened since last chapter. I guess all I really want to say is this: Thanks for continuing to read my story! I've started to get a lot of views, followers and favourites, which is seriously awesome. I really appreciate all the support. These notes are too short for me. Uh… Is it your birthday? If it is, happy birthday! If it isn't, be sure to bring up this chapter when it's your birthday, so that I can wish you a happy one! I don't know where this is all coming from. Um, enjoy.**

 **This chapter will be somewhat short. It's more of a breather chapter than a proper, important piece of the story. I guess it helps to keep the story flowing more neatly instead of immediately jumping from one major event to the next. Well, I hope you enjoy the latest chapter of Legacy! :D**

After some time, Sonic and Tails finally found their way back out of the jungle. They caught the train back to Station Square. The next two or three hours were fairly uninteresting, especially in comparison to the earlier battle, but at least they were predictable and simple. Sonic and Tails wandered the city. They bought Sonic a new pair of gloves, as he now only had one, which was barely hanging onto his hand. They found a cheap place and bought some fast food for dinner. Everywhere they went, people's heads turned. The two returning heroes returned greetings, answered questions, and brought many a fangirl's dream to life. Before long, the sun had begun to set.

"Okay, there's a little bit of a problem here," Tails admitted, as he and his friend walked along a now almost deserted street.

"What is it?" Sonic asked.

"Well… I don't have any money left, there isn't enough daylight to fly the Tornado back to South Island, and we don't have anywhere we can stay."

"Ah." There was a brief silence, then Sonic snapped his fingers. "I know what to do!"

Less than five minutes later, the two had come to one of the many houses in Station Square. This particular house had a simple, rounded design. Tails immediately realised Sonic's plan. "Of course! Great idea!" He stepped forward and knocked on the door.

Inside the house, its occupants heard the knock. "Cream, would you go and answer that, please?" Vanilla called to her daughter.

"Okay, Mother!" Cream responded. She appeared from her bedroom a second later, Cheese following closely. She opened the door and, seeing Sonic and Tails, gasped with excitement. "Oh my gosh it's you guys!" she almost shouted, then turned back to the inside of her house. "Mother! Mother, come quickly!" she called, and then returned to her friends. "How are you?! It's been ages!" Cheese let out a happy 'Chao!' of agreement, the ball above his head turning into a heart.

"Hey, Cream, hey Cheese!" Sonic smiled, waving. "We're great, thanks. Is that still you two? You both look so different!"

Cream's style had changed over the years. She still sported her orange dress, but it was a little shorter, and a scarf had replaced her blue bow. She was much taller, and essentially just looked more grown up. Cheese, on the other hand, was still wearing his red bow tie, but he had taken on a different appearance. He had what looked like small spines sticking out from the back of his head, he had become more of a green colour, and his emotion ball was bright green. "Yeah, it's definitely us!" Cream confirmed. "I mean, the last time we met, I was only six, so… I'm just older now. I guess I've sort of adopted this style over time. I think it looks nice, but that's just me. As for Cheese, he reincarnated a few months ago, and now I'm trying to raise him into a Run type Chao, because I reckon they're just the cutest… Anyway, come in! Mother will be so pleased to see you."

Vanilla entered the living room as Sonic and Tails came in. "Oh, hello!" she said. "I saw the news today. Welcome back, Sonic!"

Sonic smiled. "Thanks. Hey, um, sorry if this is inconvenient, but we don't have anywhere to go for the night. Do you have a spare bedroom or something?"

"Oh, yes, we do!" Vanilla confirmed. "It's no trouble at all. It'd be great to have you both. I'll go and make up the beds. Cream, would you be a good girl and get our guests something to eat?"

"Alright, Mother!" Cream agreed. "This way to the kitchen," she said to Sonic and Tails, pointing towards the room next to them. "Have you had dinner yet?"

"Yes, we've eaten," Tails said as he sat down at the table. "Really, it's no trouble…"

"Well, do you want something to drink?" Cream pressed. She looked through the cupboards. "Let's see… Hot chocolate! We have some of that. Want some hot chocolate?" Without waiting for an answer, she took down the tin of chocolatey powder and pulled out three pretty mugs. "Cheese, can you boil the kettle?" she asked her Chao, who chao-ed in agreement. She quickly began to make some drinks. As she worked, she continued the conversation. "So how have you guys been?" she asked.

"So far, things have been going good," Sonic answered. "We've been kinda busy, but I'm just glad to be back for now. Stuff sucked without all you guys."

As Cream put down the drinks and sat down herself, she and Sonic continued their back-and-forth, the rabbit asking questions, the hedgehog answering. Tails stayed unusually silent throughout the whole conversation. A voice came from down the hall. "Cream, can you come here and give me some help?" Vanilla called.

"Coming, Mother!" Cream responded. "I'll just be a minute," she said, then took off, Cheese in tow.

Sonic looked at Tails. His friend seemed to be blushing. He smiled. "What?" the fox asked defensively. Sonic laughed. Tails' face changed colour to an even brighter pink. " _What?_ "

"Why are you so quiet all of a sudden?" Sonic asked in a playful, accusing tone.

Tails blushed even harder. "Y-you're making all the conversation!" he quickly argued.

"Do you have a crush on somebody?"

"No!" There was a brief silence. "…maybe. Hey, at least we're pretty close in age!"

"Called it. Pro tip: just be yourself. When we aren't busy saving the world, you should totally ask her out. You're both old enough now."

"…I hope so…"

"What are you guys talking about?" Cream asked, having appeared behind them.

Tails screamed for a split second and turned around. "Oh hi Cream!" he said, a little too quickly. "It-it was nothing important."

Cream looked confused, but shrugged it off. "Okay, then. So, where were we? You were talking about fighting that Fang guy, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Sonic remembered. "So… I was up to the point where he had just taken his gun out again. I was up against a wall, and unless I could get some speed up and run away as fast as possible, I was dead. But then, somebody snuck up behind Fang and punched him, right in the face, and it was epic. Not only that, but it saved my life. Can you guess who it was?"

"Who was it?" Cream asked. Sonic pointed at Tails, who realised he was being talked about and looked at the ground. Cream smiled. "That sounds like you were amazing!" she told him. "If Sonic's telling the truth, you saved his life. That's great!" She gave Tails a quick, friendly hug.

The fox laughed nervously and turned a brighter pink than should be possible. Sonic shot him a thumbs-up.

xX*Xx

It was later that night, and the sky was a black carpet studded with pinpricks of light. At that time, many people would have been asleep. However, Sonic and Tails were still awake. They sat on the end of one of the beds. Tails took out his Miles Electric and brought up the map. "Alright. Well, tomorrow, I think there's a way we can make progress in both of our goals at once. This Emerald-" he pointed at one of the coloured markers - "appears to be continually moving. I tracked its path around the world, and confirmed that it's on Angel Island."

Sonic caught on. "And what you're saying is that we get the Chaos Emerald and try to find Knuckles while we're there. Right?"

"Right! Angel Island, according to a quick search, is currently reasonably close to Station Square, so we'll fly there tomorrow. Does that sound like a good plan?"

"Yep." Sonic yawned. "Well, it's late. I'm tired. Goodnight, Tails." He walked over to the other bed and turned off the lights.

"Night."

 **Another chapter done. As I said, this was a short chapter. However, it was necessary to make the transition between events smoother. And yes, I'm a Taiream person. They would be so cute together. :3 I don't have anything against Taismo, though. You know what, you go and ship whoever you want to ship. Well, that's all from me this chapter. Bye! :)**


	8. Chapter 8: Island In The Heavens

**Chapter 8 - Island In The Heavens**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Thanks! :) Well, here's your next chapter.**

 **Dear Quantum27: Yep! (And it only cost half the price of the laptop itself…) Glad you liked it, and thanks for the support as usual.**

 **Dear karygarcia21: Thank you for reading, and hope you enjoy! :)**

 **I'm currently working on a cover for Legacy! If you follow any of my other stories, you'll know that I'm also very artistic and draw my own covers for most of my work. If all goes well, there'll be a cover up before the next chapter. No spoilers, but it's going to be crammed with as much awesome as I can cram it with. So prepare to see a cover on this sometime soon!**

 **I've gone back over my old writing. The past chapters, back when I first started writing this, sounded a lot better the first time I wrote them. Okay, that's a nice way of putting it. While it gets the story across, it's somewhat sloppily done, and some parts were just absolutely hardcore cringey to the point of, were it physically possible, me facepalming through not only my own head, but the heads of anybody unfortunate enough to be standing behind me. I've made several changes to the first five chapters, just so that things flow a little better and don't seem too forced. (The last 2 chapters were okay, so I decided to just leave them as they are.) My author's notes are even worse, but they were my thoughts at the time, so I'm going to keep those. None of the edits impact on the story's plot in the slightest, they just make everything sound a lot better. You could continue reading without looking back at what I've changed… but if you're interested, go right ahead, I guess.**

 **Well… chapter 8. I absolutely cannot believe I got this far. I never make it this far when writing anything. Fanfiction, original fiction, I find it hard to even keep my schoolwork going until the end. I suppose I have all the people following this to thank for keeping this story alive. Thank you all for your support. Love y'all. This one has a slow start, but it gets much more action-packed at the end. So I hope you all like it.**

Sonic could vaguely feel somebody shaking him. Still half-asleep, he mumbled something that sounded something like "Just five more minutes of sleepy time…" The shaking didn't stop, so he rolled over. He squinted in the morning sunlight. Tails, presumably the culprit of the merciless shaking, had one hand on his arm. "Finally, you're awake," he said. "We need to get going quickly. Remember, we're working with limited time."

Rubbing his eyes, Sonic stood up. He looked down. Hadn't his arm been almost entirely back to normal when he had fallen asleep? The metal was nearly halfway down now. "Yeah…" he said to Tails. He shook his head, partially to wake himself up, partially to snap himself out of it. "Yeah, we should get going."

They started to leave. As they came through the kitchen, they saw Vanilla, Cream and Cheese. "Good morning!" Vanilla said cheerfully. "I'm making pancakes for breakfast, would you like some?"

"Sounds great," Sonic agreed. "Thanks, Vanilla."

The heroes ate quickly and set off. "Good luck!" Cream told them. "See you soon!" Cheese added his typical happy shout of "Chao!"

"Bye!" said Sonic and Tails. With that, they set off on the next part of their journey.

xX*Xx

Within minutes, the friends had reached the Tornado. Tails sat in the cockpit and turned the plane on. Sonic jumped up on the wing. "Ready for take off?" Tails asked.

"Whenever you are!" Sonic replied.

The fox nodded and started moving the Tornado. It rolled forwards on the ground for a while before taking off into the clouds. For a short time, there was silence. Then, unexpectedly, Tails broke it. "So… what's it like?"

"What?" Sonic asked.

Tails went red. Nope. Stupid question. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea. "N-nothing."

"Come on," Sonic pressed. "You asked me something. What was it?"

"Okay…" Tails knew that Sonic wouldn't give up. "What… what's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"You know. Coming back after so long. Being thrown into another adventure fighting the guy we thought we defeated. Being… well…"

Sonic knew exactly what Tails meant, but tried to get a straight answer anyway. "Being what? Just say it."

"…being turned… into…" Tails couldn't finish the sentence. It didn't seem real.

"Yeah, I get it." Sonic thought about the question. "Well, in answer to your first enquiry: kind of crazy. I was barely expecting that I would ever come back. And everybody I know has grown up and is so different from when I last saw them. But at the same time, it's totally awesome. After all this time, I'm finally back where I belong. So, I guess it's equal parts freaky and epic." He paused for a moment. "Part two: I don't really know what to think about it. I thought I had destroyed any chance Eggy had at ever coming back. But here he is again. Maybe I'm used to fighting him now, cause it seems pretty natural at this point. Although it'd be nice if it ended for real this time. And now for the last one." He stopped again. "Well… Honestly, it's sort of weird more than anything. I mean, I don't really notice it most of the time. I've gotten used to it now. It's almost normal, but not. …I have the feeling that none of this is making any sense. Ugh, these answers suck."

"No, that's all I really wanted…" Tails said. Trying to change the topic, he quickly explained, "We're almost there. Get ready."

"When am I ever not ready?"

xX*Xx

The clouds parted with an almost magical effect. Angel Island floated beneath them. The lush jungle covered much of the surface. Tall mountains dominated the inland. Almost-hidden ruins gave the floating island a mysterious aura. The Master Emerald glowed a brilliant green on its shrine. In short, it was a beautiful place.

The Tornado landed close to the massive emerald. "You try and figure out where exactly on Angel Island that Chaos Emerald is," Sonic told Tails. "I'll go find Knux."

"Okay," Tails agreed.

Sonic grinned and ran off towards the Master Emerald shrine. He looked around, trying to find Knuckles. "If I was a Guardian, where would I be…"

As if to answer his question, a blur shot out from the bushes and knocked him over. It stopped long enough to become visible. He was a red echidna with violet eyes, wearing a hat. Knuckles. The Guardian glared at Sonic, who was trying to get up. "Who the hell are you?" he asked in an unfriendly tone.

"Knuckles?" Sonic tried, but didn't get an answer. "It's me, Sonic."

Knuckles stood there for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Sonic is gone." He threw another punch, which the hedgehog just barely managed to dodge.

"Come on, Knux, don't you recognise me?" Sonic kept going. "You know… helped save your island a few times… we went on a bunch of adventures… saved the world sometimes?"

A well-aimed kick in the leg told Sonic that Knuckles wasn't buying it. The echidna continued attacking, and Sonic kept dodging. As he tried without success to knock out the intruder, Knuckles argued back. "I see you've done your research. I respect that. But a bit of knowledge and similar looks won't fool me."

Ducking another punch, Sonic hit back half-heartedly. "Dude, I don't want to fight you. Stop being stubborn and think. What proof do you have-" he jumped sideways to avoid getting hit again - "that it isn't me?"

Swiping at Sonic again, Knuckles answered, "First, I saw him die. Second, after five years, there's no way he'd come here alone. He would've found Tails or someone first. And third, Sonic the Hedgehog wouldn't allow himself to look like that."

Sonic knew what Knuckles was talking about, and was surprised by how much it hurt. "For crying out loud, Knuckles!" he yelled in frustration. "Are you still this stubborn? Surely it can't be this hard to-"

"Why are you fighting?" someone asked from above. Sonic and Knuckles looked up. Tails was flying down towards them. He landed in between the combatants. "Cut it out!"

Knuckles looked confused. "Tails?"

With a facepalm, Sonic sighed. "NOW do you believe me, Knux?"

"Wait…" Knuckles paused for a moment. "Hang on a freaking second. Sonic?"

"You're damn right, Knuckles. Long time no see, knucklehead." Sonic smiled.

"It is you!" Knuckles held up a hand, which Sonic high-fived. "Welcome back, dude!"

xX*Xx

The friends spent a while getting each other up to date. "So, why didn't you answer my calls?" Tails asked Knuckles.

The echidna looked down. "Uh… funny story… Ikindadroppedthemileselectricofftheisland-"

"Slow down!" Tails interrupted.

"Okay… Well, I was exploring the island one day. And I took the Miles Electric with me. And I kind of dropped it. Off the edge of the island. And it fell into the ocean. And it's probably broken. …It could've happened to anyone!"

Tails blinked, then said slowly, "Are… you… serious?"

"It was an accident!"

Sonic laughed. "Classic Knuckles." He dodged a friendly punch and ignored a "Shut up". He continued. "So, aside from breaking stuff, what've you been doing?"

"Mostly just guarding the Emerald and exploring nearby Zones. Nothing too interesting," Knuckles replied.

"Sitting on your glowing rock and looking at stuff. Cool. Oh, and by the way, nice hat."

"Thanks." Knuckles reached a hand up to readjust his hat: brown with a blue stripe, which was lined with red stars in yellow circles. "This was my dad's a long time ago. I kept it, in case he ever came back. But I don't think he's going to. So… I guess it's my hat now." He turned to Sonic. "So, the hell happened to you?"

"What do you mean by that?" Sonic asked.

"There are two parts. How did you get back, and why do you look like half a Metal Sonic?"

"Half a… Wow," Sonic rolled his eyes, "really? Well, there's a lot. First one: long story short, time travel, Silver, going to the future, a bit of luck. And second… I'd prefer to go over it when we have a lot more time. Because right now we're trying to work on finding the Chaos Emerald that's on the island, right, Tails?" He gave Tails a come-on-help-me-out-here look.

Tails caught on. "Uh, yeah. While you were beating each other up, I took some more readings like you told me to. If my scans are correct, which they are, the Emerald is at the edge of the Sandopolis Desert."

Sonic and Knuckles smiled. "Cool," Sonic said. "Let's do it to it!"

 **Well… there we go! I guess this is Legacy & Knuckles now. I blame the Sonic Twitter for my memes. It was a difficult call, but Knuckles' theme song will be Unknown from M.E.'s Sonic Adventure… pause for dramatic effect… 2 version! And man, it was hard to choose between the two versions. In case you're interested, the way I'm going to try and write Knuckles is this: He's hilariously stubborn and somewhat gullible, but surprisingly smart when it comes to certain things and actually really nice. And he has his moments of epically hilarious boss-ness. Oh yeah, and that is the hat from the Sonic OVA. Go watch it if you haven't. It's a stupidly cheesy movie, but still a good one. Anyway, that's it for this chapter and have a good day!**


	9. Chapter 9: The Path To Sandopolis

**Chapter 9 - The Path To Sandopolis**

 **Dear GRACEYlikeAboss: Thanks for reading! So glad you could join the site. :D**

 **I mentioned last chapter that I was drawing a cover for Legacy, and that I'd try to have it up by now. The cover still isn't drawn, unfortunately… I'm having trouble deciding between a few designs. So… I made a poll about it! The poll is on my profile, at the top of the screen. You can only vote if you have an account, but if you don't, check it out anyway, and tell me your answer in a guest review. Hopefully by chapter 10 (10! Holy totem poles!) I will have decided and there'll be a nice image to go with this story. Hope you weren't excited for that. Sorry!**

 **Now, I'd like to devote a paragraph to a shout out. My friend, GRACEYlikeAboss, recently joined Fanfiction! I strongly suggest checking her out. She has brilliant writing talent. I'm not just saying that because we're best friends. It's true! She's writing an alternate universe story about the two well-known YouTubers Markiplier and jacksepticeye. If you like those YouTubers, you should read it. It's great! Anyways, back to my regular notes:**

 **Sorry that this chapter took longer than normal. In order to ensure that I got everything right, I went through the locations used in this chapter in-game. I know what you're thinking. 'Zosonils, you didn't need to do that!' 'Zosonils, you could have just watched a let's play!' 'Zosonils, it doesn't matter if it doesn't fit perfectly with the game!' 'The heck with Sonic Mania, where's Dr. Robotnik's Meme Spinball Fishing Adventure 06: Rise of Lyric & Knuckles?' Well, one: I know I didn't have to do that, but I'm sort of a perfectionist. I like this game anyways. It was fun. Two: usually, Let's Players try and get it done quickly and with lots of points, instead of looking around. I wanted to explore a bit and find new paths to send the heroes on, rather than just hoping the gamer I was watching would walk in that direction. Three: I know it doesn't matter (now what happens, I will never give up the fight… I'm not concentrating). But I wanted to do it this way. So I did. Four: somebody will make a ROM hack eventually. Be patient.**

 **Future chapters won't be as quick to update as the previous ones, unfortunately. I'm always busy these days, it seems. I try to make the chapters the highest quality writing I can, in order to make up for having to wait two or so weeks in between them. Also, I've fully written out a plot for this, so writer's block probably won't slow things down any further, phew. And the plot is 38 chapters long. Ooh boy. This'll be fun…**

 **Now that my typical meaningless drabble is over, story time!**

Knuckles snapped a stick off a tree and drew a circle in the dirt with it. "Okay, let's say this is Angel Island," he explained. Drawing a slightly smaller circle within the 'island', he continued, "That's the river." He shaded in a patch through the middle. "Those are the mountains…" He drew a large X at the top. "…that's where we are right now…" He finished with another, smaller X at the bottom. "…and there's the Chaos Emerald." He began to draw a line going from one X to the other, saying, "We need to cross a bit of the jungle, go through HydroCity here, over Lava Reef Mountain here, and around the Marble Garden Ruins here. From there, we reach Sandopolis Desert, where the Chaos Emerald is located. It'll probably take us about three days."

"THREE DAYS?!" Sonic exclaimed. "Hang on, pass me that stick." He grabbed the stick off Knuckles and drew a much shorter line, going around the mountains and straight towards the second X. "Wouldn't this way be a million times faster?"

"Nope. Give me back my stick," Knuckles said, pulling it out of Sonic's hands. "That goes through the Launch Base, where Eggman first set up his stuff here. And since I blew it the absolute hell up with my epic bomb all those years ago, it's blocked off by this wall that fell over and inconveniently got in the way. I've tried to go there, but it doesn't work. One does not simply walk through a mountain of blown up metal. It'd take twice as long. We're going my way, alright? I know my way around. You gotta trust me on this one."

Sonic sighed. "Okay, fine. Are you sure there isn't a faster way? I don't know how long we have to save the world and solve this problem, but three days is a long time."

"If we go right now and don't stop unless we absolutely have to, we might get there in two."

"Come on, it won't be that bad," Tails said brightly. "Let's get going!"

xX*Xx

They set off, beginning to run towards HydroCity. For a while, there was silence as they raced at high speeds through the jungle. Then Knuckles spoke. "So, Sonic. You still haven't actually told me why you look like half a Metal Sonic."

"Are you seriously gonna use that description every time you mention the fact that I'm slowly being transformed into a lethal killer robot against my will and beyond my control?"

"Wow, somebody's acting passive aggressive today… is it that bad?"

"Yep. …That sounded way more morbid than I wanted it to. So, anyways, you know how Eggman said that he had corrupted those fake Chaos Emeralds so that even if I came back, I would become one of his minions? That's pretty much what's happening. Kinda depressing, but at least I'm not dead. Oh, and turns out he's still out there, and he's sending random people after us. Or at least he sent one random person after us. And sometimes he takes control. It's… not good, but we're working on it. It turns out that because the Chaos Emeralds are magically magic or however they work, they bring me back to normal a bit. Actually, Tails, how does that work?"

"I'm not certain, but I have a bit of a theory," Tails explained. "The Chaos Emeralds don't react well with machines. While they can be used as batteries for machines, their energy is much more powerful when reacting with something living. I think that the Emeralds allow your own power to become stronger than the corrupted energy Eggman's using, at least temporarily, hence the restoration."

"Okay, a simple 'their magic adds to my awesomeness' would've been fine, but that also works. Anyway, we're gonna get all the Chaos Emeralds and try to permanently get me back to normal. But just to make things harder, it's speeding up. Apparently, Eggy thought that he wasn't screwing us all over fast enough. But hey, like I said, at least I'm not de-" He cut off abruptly as the three of them stopped at a bridge.

Below them, the clear waters of the deep river stretched out seemingly endlessly. Bricks with a blue and brown colour scheme lined the bottom and sides. "So, we go down there, and then we come up at the edge of the mountain?" Tails asked.

"Uh-huh," Knuckles confirmed. At this, Sonic walked to the tall cliff face at the other end of the bridge, hit his head on it a few times, then stood there. Knuckles sighed. "He's still terrified of water, isn't he?"

Tails nodded. He walked over to his friend. "Come on, Sonic, it's not that bad. We just need to go down, cross HydroCity, and then come back up, and we'll be at Lava Reef Mountain." Meanwhile, Knuckles was scaling the cliff. Tails kept talking. "You won't have to go in the water for more than a few minutes. And hey, there are air bubbles down there."

Knuckles slammed on the button atop the cliff. "Think fast!" he yelled as the bridge Sonic and Tails were standing on collapsed. He jumped and fell with them, holding his hat firmly on his head. "Woo!"

As the echidna began gliding to the upper path, Tails quickly grabbed Sonic, who was screaming extremely loudly, and started flying. They all landed on the higher path. Sonic continued screaming for about ten seconds before he realised he wasn't drowning. He blinked hard a few times, then looked at Knuckles and shouted, "The hell?"

Shrugging, Knuckles defended himself. "Hey, it's not like you were gonna go down there without someone throwing you off. You're the one who wanted us to go as fast as possible."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know."

xX*Xx

The three heroes ran along the path and through a loop. They avoided a crumbling platform, then raced around several more loops. After avoiding a few spikes, they reached a dead end. The only way was down, into the water. Knuckles jumped in and started treading water, saying, "See? It's fi- oh, wait, I can swim, you can't."

"Not helping," Tails told him. He turned back to Sonic. "Come on. It'll be fine. We don't have to spend long underwater."

Sonic took a deep breath, as if it would be his last, and nodded. "Okay… I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm gonna be fine." He edged slowly towards the water, then closed his eyes and fell forwards. He sunk almost instantly. Tails dove after him and started dragging him through the underwater path. Knuckles followed. They kept going down deeper, then made their way through. Knuckles pointed at a spring. Tails nodded and swam to it, still holding onto Sonic, who looked like he was going to throw up. The spring bounced them up, and a layer of fans thrust them the rest of the way, until they hit solid ground again. Sonic fell over and gasped for air, spitting out some water. "That was an awful, awful idea," he decided. "Why didn't we just use the Tornado and fly over?"

Tails blinked, then facepalmed at himself. "I should've thought of that."

"Let's just keep going," Knuckles suggested. Without waiting for agreement, he started to run up the slope leading to the next part of HydroCity. Sonic and Tails tried to keep up.

They continued for a good few minutes before having to go underwater again. Sonic sighed, knowing what was coming. "Tails, can you just drag me under?" he asked. Tails shrugged. He grabbed Sonic's hand again and pulled him under. Followed closely by Knuckles, he continued underwater for some time before finally coming up again. Sonic coughed and shook the water off his spines. "I think I might puke in a second."

"Don't get it anywhere near my hat," Knuckles warned him. "Come on, there are some more fans up here. We're making good progress."

Sure enough, there were more rows of fans just above them, and after a small climb, the heroes were once again caught in the current and thrown up into the next area. They ran through some half-pipes that took them down, then up, then down again. More than once, the pipes briefly and unexpectedly went underwater, causing Sonic to freak out again. He didn't stop running, but he was still coughing up water when even more fans pushed them onwards. Just as he got all the water out of his lungs, the threesome went through more half-pipes and were under again for a moment. It continued like this for quite some time. Pipes, fans, water, loops. A few times, they had to make their way upwards while avoiding spikes. Then the pattern would continue. Run through pipes. Get blown upwards by some fans. Go underwater for a while. Avoid spikes. Run through a loop or two.

"I know you guys are my biggest fans, but this is getting ridiculous," Sonic joked, as he and his friends rose in the air.

"That wasn't funny the last four times you said it," Knuckles complained.

It kept going. Loops. Spikes. Fans. The same pun from Sonic, over and over. Knuckles telling him to shut up. Going underwater. Pipes. More loops. Eventually, they came to a bridge. "Okay, I have to destroy this so that we can keep going," Knuckles explained. "We're gonna go underwater for quite a while again. You okay with that, Sonic?" The hedgehog took another deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded. "Cool. Three, two, one, bam." The echidna pressed a button similar to the first one, blowing up the bridge below them. The three fell into the water. Knuckles made a 'come on' motion with one hand. Tails swam after him, and Sonic walked as fast as he could.

After a second or two, Sonic's hydrophobia fully kicked in. He could feel the water pressing in on him, threatening to drown him if he stayed under for too long. His every instinct screamed for him to get to dry land. He couldn't breathe, and it was nearly impossible not to automatically try. He tried to get up some speed, but it was useless trying. The water slowed him down to an almost average pace, just to add to the terror. All these thoughts came in the space of another second. Tails looked back at him with an expression that clearly said, _You look like you're having a heart attack._ Sonic shot back a glare that replied, _I AM having a flipping heart attack, thank you very much._ Knuckles was using one hand to prevent his hat from floating away, and used the other for a facepalm. He kept going, and Sonic and Tails followed. As the trio came to a certain point, a giant fan extended from the wall and forced them onwards at high speeds. They all grabbed onto some poles instinctively, which stopped them for a few seconds, then broke. Sonic could feel the air blowing right into his face, but couldn't breathe it in. It was torture. Eventually, the fan stopped, and they could move normally (well, almost) again. They kept going, slowly but surely making their way through the dark, watery abyss.

xX*Xx

Finally, after what felt like a million years, the water stopped. The three heroes made it up to the edge of the river. The mountains lay just ahead of them. As soon as he was on land, Sonic gasped for air. He blinked his eyes rapidly, then lay down in a ball of panic. He held up a hand. "Give me a minute, I need to have a quick panic attack." He could still feel the water stinging his eyes, blocking his ears, getting up his nose, filling his lungs, and trying to drown him. For a while, he stayed curled up tightly on the ground, then his heartbeat finally returned to normal. He stood up again. "Okay, I'm good. Uh, you guys saw nothing. Okay?"

Tails and Knuckles nodded. "The sun's going down," Knuckles pointed out matter-of-factly as he squeezed the water out of his hat. The sun was, in fact, setting, and there were perhaps a few minutes before all light vanished. "We should set up for the night and get some sleep. I'm pretty sure there's a conveniently placed cave in the mountain that should keep us sheltered. If we rest there and get up early next morning, we can probably make it the rest of the way tomorrow."

After some searching, the three found that there was a cave close to where they were going next. They decided to use it to protect them from any bad weather overnight. "Well, I'm crashing," Knuckles announced. "Night, guys. Good to have you back." He lay down on the ground and went to sleep.

Tails also closed his eyes. Sonic stayed awake for a while longer. His eyes, out of habit, flicked down to his arm. He suddenly registered what he had seen, and looked down again. This time yesterday, it had been almost entirely back to normal. Now, the metal replacing it had stretched back down, nearly all the way to his hand. He sighed, partially in frustration, partially out of stress. Thinking about it harder, he could feel the technology in the spines on his back, too. Well, that was just brilliant. Sonic reminded himself that it wasn't going to be a problem for long, because he and his friends were going to get the Chaos Emeralds and use them to fix everything. He wouldn't let himself hurt his friends, he was going to kick Eggman's butt for good, he would get his team back together, he'd use the Chaos Emeralds to stop (he couldn't help quoting Knuckles in his mind) looking like half a Metal Sonic, and then everything could go back to normal. Satisfied with that optimistic view, he closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

xX*Xx

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As the morning sun illuminated the cave, Sonic heard Knuckles' voice in his ear. "Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Are you awake yet? I know you're awake. Get up!"

"I'm conscious, and fully aware of the fact that you sound like a broken CD. Give me a minute," he responded. Knuckles walked over to the entrance restlessly. Sonic yawned and stood up. Sleeping on a floor of rock had not been a good idea. He stretched a bit. Suddenly, he noticed a very familiar sensation. He pulled off the glove on his right hand, and his suspicions were confirmed. So much for getting that Chaos Emerald a few days ago. He looked like nothing had changed since he finally got home. Deciding not to panic, he simply took a deep breath to calm himself, then went over to where Tails and Knuckles were standing. "Let's go."

"What's up?" Tails asked, noticing that Sonic was looking uncharacteristically worried. He looked down to the hedgehog's arm, and realised that it had changed back into metal. "Oh, man… it's gotten worse." Sonic nodded and sighed. "Don't worry!" Tails tried to reassure his friend. "Everything'll be okay! We're gonna get a Chaos Emerald, and then we can bring you back to normal!"

"Yeah, I know," Sonic forced himself to smile, knowing it would calm Tails down. "I'm fine, really."

Knuckles was getting thoroughly impatient. "Come on! Aren't you supposed to be the fastest thing alive? If we don't get going, we won't reach Sandopolis today."

xX*Xx

The threesome set off again. They took a path through the inside of Lava Reef. "I remember this place," Sonic commented. "I press this button, and then we can keep going, right?" He jumped up and hit a button. The wall slid upwards, revealing a new pathway. "Called it!"

At the start of the path was a pool of lava. There were a few unstable-looking rocks leading from one side to the other. "This doesn't look safe," Tails pointed out. He grabbed Sonic by the hand and flew him over, then came back and did the same with Knuckles. Now that the lava had been bypassed, there was a flight of wooden stairs. On the opposite wall, there were evenly spaced metal devices. As soon as the heroes came too close, they began to periodically shoot out fire. Once again, Tails helped his friends by flying up and landing them safely above danger.

The small cave opened out, and they were in a much more open area. They jumped over another pool of lava, then avoided crumbling platforms. Sonic pressed another button, opening a door again. There was a tall wooden column which he ran straight down. His speed carried him over a wide pool of lava, and he went flying to the other side. "Yeah!" he shouted. Above him, Tails and Knuckles heard his voice. "Come on, guys, it's perfectly safe!" Tails flew down and over the lava, and Knuckles followed, gliding across.

They avoided spikes, falling magma, and other hazards. There was a drop that led into another closed space. Knuckles hit another button before Sonic got to it. He smirked as the seemingly solid wall slid back to reveal more of the path. "You're too s-"

"If you finish that sentence I will destroy you," Sonic warned. "Don't say it."

"Okay, jeez."

There was another set of wooden stairs, and then a small pool of molten lava. After the three passed those obstacles, below them was a pit filled with extremely hot magma. "Okay, I have a plan," Tails announced. "I'll take Sonic down. Knuckles, you should be able to glide to safety. Then we can keep going." He took Sonic by the hand and flew down, landing them both safely on solid, cool rock. Knuckles jumped off the edge and slowly descended. He glided into the wall above Sonic and Tails, stuck the sharp spikes on his fists into the rock, and climbed the rest of the way down.

For some time, the pattern continued. The heroes climbed stairs, dodged fire, avoided spikes, pressed buttons, and tried not to fall into the lava that had given the mountain half of its name. Along the way, there were platforms with spikes along the bottom that rose slowly, hung in mid-air for a tedious second, then dropped sharply and repeated the process, which they used to get up and continue. Press buttons. Climb stairs. Avoid fire. Jump over spikes and lava. Go up and down through the network of caves within the mountain. Finally, they crossed a bridge and came to the end. A river of magma came into a sort of fiery, dangerous waterfall, falling silently and steadily behind them. Aside from the radiating heat that promised certain death, it was somewhat pretty. "Okay, fun fact time," Knuckles explained. "If you plan to go to Hidden Palace and stop a giant, powerful Emerald from getting stolen, you continue to the 'reef' part of Lava Reef. But if you want to leave the mountain and take a shortcut to the Marble Gardens, you smash a hole in the wall right here." He demonstrated by punching the rocky wall, his fists a blur, until it caved in. The cave was suddenly filled with sunlight, and Knuckles stepped out. Beyond him was the steep descent into the ruins.

xX*Xx

Sonic stepped forward and looked down. It was a long and steep drop, but not so much that he couldn't run down safely. He took another step and was suddenly racing almost vertically along the side of the mountain leading down into Marble Garden. "This is just as awesome as I remember it being!" he shouted as he ran at super speed.

After watching Sonic for a second, Tails and Knuckles jumped after him. They all ran, nearly fell down the mountain, for a while, then came to a sudden stop. Knuckles paused for a moment, then held out his hand to catch his hat, which had fallen off on the way down. Putting it back on, he then punched a wall in front of them, revealing the rest of the path. "Okay, there's a shortcut around here," he explained as they climbed some grassy steps. "Tails, you need to fly us up here and through some spikes, and that'll get us way ahead."

"Alright," Tails agreed. He grabbed Sonic and Knuckles and flew up to a higher platform. There was a clear path to a higher, faster route, but it went directly up a tunnel that was lined with spikes. He took a deep breath. "Okay, here we go." He flew up, clearly stressed. If he went too far in one direction, his friends would hit the spikes. He couldn't let that happen. Tails came out of the tunnel with no injury done to him or his friends, and sighed in relief. "Whew, that was tough."

They went up steps and used a set of inexplicably floating blocks to continue on their way. There was a large gap that they flew over, again with the help of Tails. They detoured through caves, avoided spikes, and ran up and down the side of the hill. It wasn't long before they reached the end.

"Hey, I can see the desert down there!" Sonic said, looking down. Below them were the seemingly endless stretches of sand that had named Sandopolis. The hedgehog started to run down, calling to his friends, "Let's do this!"

xX*Xx

Underground, Eggman smiled. "Good hedgehog. Run along and lead me to that second Emerald." He opened a communications window, like the one he had used to yell at Fang via his computer. This time, he didn't call Fang. He dialled a different number. "Wolf, do you hear me? This is your boss speaking."

The reply came almost instantly. _"I'm 'ere. Whaddya want?"_

"Did you steal that aircraft like I asked you to?"

 _"_ _Yep."_

"Good, because you'll be needing it. Go up to Angel Island, and land in the desert. Sonic and two of his little friends are going there. Hopefully they'll lead you to a Chaos Emerald. Follow them, then take them out."

 _"_ _I dunno… three against one? That don't sound too easy."_

"Don't stress. I plan on giving you a little backup."

 _"_ _Well, which of his friends is he goin' with?"_

"If he's on Angel Island, he will have found that gullible Knuckles. And from the start, he's been with Tails-"

 _"_ _I'm in."_ As soon as Eggman spoke the name, 'Wolf', as he had been nicknamed, knew that he wouldn't miss this opportunity for anything. _"How much time I got?"_

Eggman considered this for a brief moment. "You should try to get there in about fifteen minutes," he concluded.

 _"_ _Good thing I nicked a real fast plane, then. I'll get ya that Chaos Emerald, no problem."_ 'Wolf' disconnected from the call with a click and a beep.

Closing the communication, Eggman returned to working on his computer. He opened another program and began to type in line after line of code. "Ah, it's much further than it was earlier. Brilliant! If I enter this, he'll do that… no, if I put that in, he'll bluescreen on me… ooh, that wasn't here before! Let's add in lots of commands for that! Error? I'll show you 'error', you… oh, wait, I have to put in the pathping code. Never mind. Okay, let's keep coding here…" He continued to type, preparing everything that would be needed to ensure his victory.

And he laughed triumphantly at his own brilliance.

 **Yay, another chapter finished! I'm loving writing this so much. It's really exciting. Next chapter, we'll have a bit of nice action and stuff. And if you've read a certain other story of mine, you might recognise who 'Wolf' is. No spoilers, though. If you feel as if I spoiled anything, you have permission to throw me off a cliff via reviews. Also, HYPE FOR 10 CHAPTERS! To quote the efficacious Eggman of the past (I'm not sorry): No way! I can't believe this! Well, that'll be it for now, and enjoy your day!**


	10. Chapter 10: A Chaotic Battle

**Chapter 10 - A Chaotic Battle**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Ha, I didn't realise that coincidence until you mentioned it. Again with the fences? XD Love that phrase. In fact, I used it. That last part? About that… Well, no spoilers, because they're too (quote unquote) spoilery, but… you probably won't see this stuff coming. Thanks for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy.**

 **I'm not getting a lot of reviews… If you're reading this but not leaving reviews, please do! It really helps to motivate me. The box to leave a review is at the bottom of the page. You don't need an account to leave a review. I really appreciate reviewers. Don't be shy! :)**

 **Cover still isn't up… sorry. Working on it! Keep those votes coming. It shouldn't be long now. I'll be sure not to disappoint!**

 **Anyways. Ten. Freaking. Chapters. Holy totem poles. That's awesome!**

 **To celebrate this little milestone, I worked extra hard on this chapter non-stop, and now I'm publishing it almost instantly! Yay or something! This chapter was super exciting to write. I couldn't stop going. I'm sick of having such long author notes, so let's just get right into it! Happy whatever day you're reading this on!**

The trio had been walking through Sandopolis for around fifteen minutes, and still they hadn't found anything. The sun shone down relentlessly on the desert, heating the sand to burning temperatures.

"I think there's sand in my-" Sonic began.

"If you complain about having sand in your shoe one more time, I will push you off a three-foot-tall fence," Knuckles threatened. "Stop it."

"Why three feet high?"

"Well, while having you say the same thing over and over is irritating, it's not annoying enough to push you off a cliff. And you've been missing for five years and only came back a few days ago. So I'll just push you off a fence. But if you keep bugging me, I'll raise it up to four feet. You have been warned."

Sonic sighed. "Okay, okay." He looked around, then saw something. "Hey, there's something shiny over there!" he exclaimed, pointing. His finger landed on a soft purple glow in the distance. "I think we've found what we're looking for!"

As they got closer, Sonic turned out to be right. The glow was coming from a purple jewel, identical to the green one that Sonic and Tails had obtained a few days earlier. "That's a Chaos Emerald, alright!" Tails confirmed. He went to grab it, but somebody knocked it out of his hands.

The somebody was a grey wolf. He was tall and had a muscular build. He wore black gloves and shoes, and a watch on his left wrist. "Sorry, but I'm gonna be takin' this off a' ya," he said. He turned around to reveal his dark brown eyes. "Been a while since we last met. Would prefer to keep it that way."

Tails apparently recognised the stranger. As soon as he saw the wolf, his face changed completely. His eyes narrowed in an expression that was somewhere between fear, anger and hate. "Alpha," he said coldly.

"You know this jerk?" Knuckles asked.

"Alpha was a leader of some kind where Tails came from," Sonic explained. "He kind of abused Tails. I only met him once. Never liked him, to be honest. And he's hard to understand because of the way he talks."

"Will ya shut up 'bout my accent?" Alpha retorted. "Yer the one who never used actual words. Heck, when'd ya learn to talk? Eh, I don't care. I'm takin' this Chaos Emerald, an' I'm keepin' it."

"No," Tails said. He hadn't taken his eyes off Alpha the whole time. "We need that Emerald more than you do."

"Yeeeah, I don't care. I'm still takin' it. See ya never." Alpha started to leave.

Knuckles grabbed his arm, then twisted it behind his back. "Give us back the Chaos Emerald, and get off my island!" he yelled. Alpha didn't give in, so Knuckles pushed him over onto the sand. He tried to get up, but Sonic put a metallic foot on his back.

"Stay down," he warned. He tried to pull the purple jewel out of Alpha's hand, but before he could, the wolf found the strength to stand up and throw him off. Sonic fell backwards, not hurt, but half-buried in sand. "There's sand in my eyes," he said, shaking it out of his spines and spitting some out. "And my shoe."

"Hey!" Tails yelled, finally giving into his anger. He ran straight at Alpha, punching wildly and yelling insults. Alpha dropped the Chaos Emerald, but Tails barely noticed. He continued punching furiously, still screaming strings of random insults that occasionally formed sentences. "See what it's like? This is what it feels like! This is what you did to me!"

Dodging constant attacks from Tails and Knuckles, Alpha used one hand to tap his watch. "Boss, I need backup!" he shouted.

 _"_ _Repeatin' that, I need backup! This isn't as easy as I thought it'd be!"_ Alpha's voice came from Eggman's computer.

Looking up from his keyboard, the doctor snapped into focus. "Yes…" he muttered to himself. "Ooh, I've been waiting for this!" A button appeared on his screen. _INITIATE REMOTE CONTROL?_ "Yes!" he laughed, clicking it without a moment's hesitation.

xX*Xx

Back at the fight scene, Sonic was about to help his friends to take out their enemy. Before he could, he fell over again. "Argh!" he yelled in surprise. He tried to stand up again, but couldn't. A cold sense of realisation came over him, as an all-too-familiar feeling took hold. Knowing what was coming, he got out an "Oh, no."

"What is it?" Knuckles asked, taking his eyes (but not his hands) off of Alpha.

Standing up, but not of his own free will, Sonic shouted, "Look out!"

It was at this point that he completely lost all control over himself. His left foot pushed him forward, and his right hand reached out towards Knuckles. The echidna was shoved off of Alpha and landed on the ground. Spitting out a few grains of sand, he shook his head wildly. "Ow," he said.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm not trying to do this, I swear." Sonic started to panic. "Why now?"

"It's okay, I'm fine," Knuckles reassured his friend. He stood up and went back to fighting Alpha. "Is this the whole control thing you were talking about yesterday?" he asked, ducking to avoid Sonic's arm. The hedgehog nodded, terrified. "Well, how do we stop it?" Knuckles continued. "We need to find out a way to stop you without accidentally killing you in the process. How do you normally do that?" He snapped his fingers under his gloves somehow, alerting Tails. "Tails! You're the smart one, what do we do?"

Tails snapped out of his angered punching frenzy, and processed what was happening. "I… well, we need to do something that will temporarily disable anything robotic, but leave him uninjured. Hmm… the Chaos Emerald!" He paused to dodge Alpha's fist, avoiding a punch to the face and throwing one himself. "If we can somehow cause the Emerald's power to fluctuate for a moment… yes! I have an idea!"

"Cut that out," Alpha said, pushing Tails off of him. "When I was told I was gonna get backup, I sure didn't expect that Sonic th' Hedgehog would be fightin' 'is friends with me. This is cool! An' I get to take a shot at all a' ya. Glad I accepted this job."

"We aren't really fighting," Knuckles argued. "Eggman's just making him have a seizure."

"Shut up, Knuckles!" Sonic and Tails shouted simultaneously, with an identical tone of annoyance.

"I'm trying to make this funny."

"Not helping," Sonic complained. He tried only half-heartedly to avoid punching Knuckles in the face. The echidna dodged out of the way quickly. Noticing his friend's stare, Sonic quickly added, "That wasn't on purpose."

"I know," Knuckles said. Alpha suddenly tackled him from behind, knocking him over. They both immediately engaged in a punching battle.

Tails kicked the wolf repeatedly. "Get off him!" he yelled. "Hang on, Knuckles, I'm coming!" Somehow, he got the strength to push Alpha off the echidna, who instantly stood up.

Sonic unwillingly tried to hit his friends, but Knuckles' hand shot up. "Sorry for being rough," he apologised as he pushed the hedgehog off him.

"That's okay," Sonic said as he stood up. He didn't advance towards his friends. Alpha pushed himself into a standing position and stood next to the hedgehog. There was a moment of tense silence as the two sides stood, facing each other. Sonic's right arm moved up. His hand seemed to change shape into something resembling a cannon. His face turned pale. "Um, this is new." A glowing pinprick of energy lit up within the cannon, and he realised what was happening. "Oh god. That wasn't there before. Guys, get out of the way!"

Tails and Knuckles barely had time to move before Sonic shot. A glowing ball of pure energy fired from his arm at super speed. Tails pulled Knuckles to the side, and they both escaped injury by centimetres. The shot flew into the distance and hit the ground, causing a surprisingly large explosion of sand.

Alpha seemed to be enjoying himself. "Heh… I can't believe this is 'appenin'! An' I'm watchin' it from over 'ere, clear as daylight! Think I'll take my Emerald while y'all fight each other." He took the purple Chaos Emerald off of the ground and turned away.

"Oh no, you don't!" Knuckles yelled, diving for the Emerald. He caught it just in time, his hat falling off from the speed. "Tails, you know how you said that you had an idea?" he asked, pulling his hat back on. "It'd be nice if we could hear that!"

"Okay." Tails took a deep breath and focused himself. "Knuckles, you can interfere with the patterns of Chaos Energy. Correct?"

"Wait, what?" Sonic asked. "When did he get this eleventh hour super power?"

Knuckles facepalmed, then moved his hand to punch Alpha, then put it back on his forehead. "I've always been able to do it, although just temporarily. For example, remember when I got electrocuted by the Master Emerald through my ears, but didn't die? I just concentrated on reducing its power-"

"You have ears?"

"Can we please focus?" Tails yelled, reminding his friends of the matter at hand. "So, now that you have the Emerald, what you need to do is increase its power so that it… interferes with Sonic, I guess. And stops him, but doesn't hurt him. Are you okay with that, Sonic?"

Sonic tried not to focus on the fact that his cannon was charging again. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just… I want this to stop. And if I get knocked out, then so be it."

Knuckles closed his eyes. "Working on it. Tails, keep them off me." He began to mutter under his breath, "The servers are the seven Chaos… Chaos is power, enriched by the heart…" As he spoke, the gemstone in his hand glowed brighter.

Alpha came up behind Knuckles, but Tails tackled him. "No!" The Emerald shone blindingly for a split-second. Sonic stopped moving, then collapsed. Tails gasped. "Sonic! Are you alright?"

"He'll be fine!" Knuckles said. "Let's deal with this joker, okay?"

To say that Alpha was angry to have lost his backup was an understatement. He let out a savage roar of fury and charged. "YOU'VE RUINED THIS ALL FOR ME AGAIN!" he screamed at Tails. "EITHER COME 'ERE AN' FACE ME, OR GO TO HELL!"

"HEY, DON'T TOUCH HIM!" Knuckles yelled back, grabbing his foe and throwing him into the ground forcefully. "Are you ready to give up yet?"

Breathing deeply, Alpha glared at his enemies. He slowly and angrily raised his hands in the air, knowing he was beaten. Tails returned the look of disgust. "I'm not as ruthless as you are, so I'm going to give you one chance," he said. "Tell us why you came here, then get out."

xX*Xx

"Well, it's a long story," Alpha began. "When I left Cocoa Island, I knew I couldn't come back. I'm blamin' ya for bringin' the Battle Bird Armada with yer bad luck. I dunno how, but ya brought 'em there somehow. So, I wandered the world a bit. Tried to get a job. Didn't work out. Kept on wanderin' aimlessly." He turned and stared at Tails. "Then, outta nowhere, I'm lookin' at the news, an' there's you, callin' yerself 'Tails' an' not givin' any recognition to yer past. D'ya know what that was like, seein' that kid who'd been nothin' but a stain on my island promoted as some kinda big damn hero? Wasn't happy with that. I tried to find somewhere else to go, but wherever I went, it was all 'bout Sonic and you. Years later, Sonic's outta the picture. Doc Eggman is s'posed to be outta action too, but after diggin' 'round a bit, turns out he ain't gone after all, is he? In fact, he's tryin'a hire people. So I say 'ya know what, I don't have anywhere else to go'. Signed up. He hired me. Now yer buddy here's back, and I get to take a shot at ya. Seemed fair enough. So I stole a plane from the military guys, then made my way up 'ere."

"Yeah, yeah, backstory stuff," Knuckles interrupted. "What do you know about Eggman's plans? We need that information."

"I didn't really understand it, what with all 'is technical jargon and whatnot. What I got sounded somethin' like this. He's tryin'a use yer friend against ya, take over 'is actions or somethin', use 'im to take over the world. I thought it was all a loada bull 'til today. He really is defenceless against 'is own actions, isn't he?" Alpha smiled. "Ye'll be lucky to all get outta this one alive an' well."

Tails took in the information, then nodded. "Okay. Now find that stolen plane, go back to where you came from, return it, and get out. Don't let me see you again." He watched without moving as Alpha left. Sighing in relief, he turned back to Sonic. "Sonic? Are you okay?" he asked his friend, kneeling down. "Can you hear me?" There was no answer. He shook Sonic lightly. "Hello?"

"I think he's unconscious," Knuckles concluded. He shook Sonic harder. "Come on, wake up. You alright? Tails is freaking out over here. A little help would be nice."

Finally, Sonic's eyes opened. "What… I… oh, hey guys." He didn't make eye contact. "…I'm sorry. I was trying to control myself, but I couldn't, and-"

"Hey. Shut up for a second. Relax," Knuckles instructed. "We're fine. And hey, even if you _were_ trying to beat me up, I could take you with one hand behind my back." He smiled comfortingly. "Does this happen regularly?"

"Way too often," Sonic answered. "So, did you guys win?"

Tails held up the purple Chaos Emerald as an answer. Sonic finally smiled.

xX*Xx

Passing the Emerald to Sonic, Tails said, "Here, take this. Hopefully that'll restore you."

Sonic took the Chaos Emerald. As the purple jewel came into contact with him, a blinding light drowned out everything. The glow hung in the air for a few seconds, then vanished, and the endless sandy slopes came back into view. When the light was gone, Sonic was looking more like his old self. The spines on his back were completely normal again, and the metal from his shoulder to halfway down his right arm was gone. He smiled. "That's more like it."

"I have no idea what just happened, but it was awesome," Knuckles said, holding up a hand, which Sonic high-fived. "We should get going now. We're done here."

"Yeah," Sonic agreed. "Bye, Knux."

"Wait, what?"

"Well, you're staying behind to guard the Master Emerald, right?" Tails asked. "That's why you came back here in the first place."

Knuckles sighed. "Yeah, good point." He thought about it, as he, Sonic and Tails walked back to the edge of the desert. "You know… the Master Emerald should be safe here. Nobody's come up here for years. And one of my best friends is back, and going on adventures! I don't wanna miss out on that."

Tails caught on. "Are you saying that you'll come?"

"No, I'm saying that I'm going to throw you guys at coconut trees and call it a sport," Knuckles sarcastically replied. "Of course that's what I mean!"

"Awesome!" Sonic grinned excitedly. "That's three of us. Now we just have to find Shadow, Amy, and the other five Chaos Emeralds! Then we're gonna go find Eggman and kick his butt for good! Let's do this!"

 **So much epicness! That chapter was so exciting to write. I couldn't help feeling kinda bad for Sonic, though. If you aren't familiar with my other work, Alpha is a fan character I made up for another fanfiction I'm doing. It's called 'Sonic and Tails - A Tale Of Origins' and is how-Sonic-met-Tails-fanfiction number 9001. (It's over nine thou- wait, do people still use that meme?) You can go and find it on my profile if you're into those kind of stories. Plugplugplugplugplug. …I have no shame. Well, that'll be it for this chapter, thank you so much for reading, please leave a review, and I will see you all in the next chapter!**


	11. Chapter 11: Next Stop: Westopolis

**Chapter 11 - Next Stop: Westopolis**

 **Dear Quantum27: That's okay, it doesn't matter if you don't review everything. I usually try to give Knuckles that personality, because it's pretty epic. Well, thanks for reading! :)**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Given your name, you could be part cat. XD *pulls you off the fence with me* Writing the interactions between characters is always fun. Especially Sonic & Knuckles. (& Knuckles & Knuckles & Knuckles… I'm sorry for my memes. Not really.) Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. :)**

 **Dear karygarcia21: Thanks! Hope you enjoy! :)**

 **Dear xXMannaXx: Aw, thank you! I will be sure to keep up said good work. I'll try not to disappoint you! *salutes* Enjoy the next chapter! :)**

 **Three chapters in five days? What? XD**

 **Pretty much another breather chapter. It's really short. This will probably be the last one I publish within a short time span, though. There's a lot of stuff going on in my life right now which I need to focus on, so I don't have as much time to write. I'm working on this whenever I possibly can, and I'm putting a lot of effort into my work. The update schedule will be messy, but hopefully I'm still publishing a well-written fanfic for you all to enjoy.**

 **Not much has happened for me to unnecessarily write half a page about, so let's just go!**

The trio had been walking through Sandopolis for some time. Sonic turned to Knuckles and asked, "So, you know how you said that going through the Launch Base would've been faster, but there's a ton of blown up stuff in the way or something?" Without waiting for the answer, he continued, "Can we go there? I have an idea that might make this much easier."

They arrived at the Launch Base. The yellow and purple metal that used to be huge buildings and overcomplicated defence systems was now reduced to rubble, sitting in a massive, inconvenient pile. "See what I mean when I said we can't just walk through this?" Knuckles pointed out.

"Where do you think is the weakest point?" Sonic asked, ignoring the sarcastic echidna.

"Hmm…" Tails looked at the debris, then pointed at one area. "This part is visibly less solid than everything else. Look, you can clearly see that it's not blocked off as heavily."

"Thanks." Sonic stood in front of the weak point and held his right arm out. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes, concentrating. It didn't work. He shook his arm slightly. Still nothing. "This was supposed to be much more awesome," he told his friends, then turned back to what he was doing. He started poking at the metal experimentally, saying to nobody in particular, "Is there some kind of manual switch for this or something?"

After the most awkward sixty seconds in history, Sonic finally got a reaction. His arm turned into the cannon he had discovered a while earlier, and a pinprick of white light appeared within it. "Yes, finally! That took longer than I expected." The cannon charged, then fired. The weak point in the wall fell apart, and then the whole mountain of wreckage collapsed in on itself. Sonic lowered his arm, which transformed back into a hand. He smiled. "That was actually really epic," he commented, before starting to walk over the rubble. Noticing his friends' stares, he quickly asked, "What?"

Tails and Knuckles started to follow. Tails turned to Sonic, confused. "How come you did that?" he asked.

Sonic shrugged. "Hey, I'm being changed into somebody else with a different set of abilities. Until I can get myself back to normal, I'm gonna just make the most of it. Strange, I never realised how much I wanted to blow up a wall with my arm at least once in my life." This finally got a laugh out of Tails, who quickly stifled it, hoping he hadn't offended Sonic. The hedgehog sighed. "What? Are we not supposed to talk about this? Because I'm talking about it. We're treating the situation like it's normal until the situation is normal, okay?"

"…Alright," Tails agreed uncertainly. They came to a set of gates with alarm lights in them. He cautiously put one foot in between the gates. "Do you think these still summon infinite waves of Badniks?" he questioned, changing the subject. The lights didn't turn on, and nothing came. "Guess not."

"Where does Eggman even get all the money and stuff for robots?" Knuckles asked. "He could probably sell illegal stuff, and whenever he takes over some city, he probably steals all their money, but how do you get the materials to make a bajillion evil robots of evilness?"

"Good question. Maybe he secretly owns some kind of really big rich company," Tails suggested.

"Either that, or Knuckles is right for once, he just steals everything," Sonic added.

Knuckles folded his arms in fake disapproval. "For once? Jerk," he complained, half-heartedly kicking Sonic in the leg.

"Didn't feel that," Sonic said, smirking. The echidna made a point of walking around to kick his other, normal leg. The hedgehog winced. "Yeah, I felt that one."

"That was the point."

xX*Xx

The meaningless conversation continued until they had walked all the way through Launch Base's ruins and gotten back to where they had started. As the threesome entered the jungle where the Tornado was parked, Tails' Miles Electric began ringing. He took out the device and looked at the screen. His face lit up in a smile. "Guys!" he shouted, answering. "It's Shadow!"

Sonic and Knuckles leaned in to look at the screen. Shadow's serious face appeared on the screen. "There you are," he greeted them. "Where are you right now?"

"It's great to see you too, Shadow," Sonic replied sarcastically. "We're on Angel Island, getting ready to leave and go… I don't know. Somewhere. We haven't figured it out yet."

"I can make a suggestion. Come over here to Westopolis," Shadow said. "G.U.N. has a Chaos Emerald here which they've agreed to give you."

"How did you know we were collecting the Emeralds?" Tails asked.

"Because you just told me. It's sort of obvious," Shadow pointed out. "You're always looking for those things. I'm going to see if I can lend you a hand doing whatever it is you're doing. Actually, what are you doing?"

"Yeah… about that," Sonic sighed. "Eggman's not gone. He's trying to take over the world. How he'll do that, I have no idea, but he's trying. So we're kicking his butt. Wanna come?"

Before Shadow could respond, somebody else appeared on the screen: Rouge. "Oh my gosh, you managed to contact them!" she said excitedly, then turned to look at the screen. "Hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? We've been trying to contact you for ages!"

"N-no, I - uh, we haven't," Shadow argued, clearly lying.

"Yes, you have," Rouge told him. She looked at Sonic, Tails and Knuckles again. "He's called you several times, but you probably don't get a strong enough signal all the way up there. He was so excited when we heard you'd come back, Sonic. But you'll never get him to admit that."

Shadow ignored the laughter coming from the other side of the connection. "So, are you guys going to come to Westopolis or not?" he asked.

"Yeah, why not?" Sonic agreed.

"Sounds great," Shadow confirmed. "Nice hat, Knuckles."

"Thanks."

Tails looked at something on the screen. "Shoot, I'm running out of battery," he explained. "We'll start flying now, and we should make it to Westopolis within an hour or two, okay?"

Rouge nodded. "See you then! Bye!" The call cut out with a click.

xX*Xx

The Tornado stood right where it had landed a few days ago. Starting the biplane up, Tails went over their plan. "So, we go to Westopolis, add a third Chaos Emerald to our collection, and see if we can get Shadow to join the team. From there, we'll work out where the rest of the Emeralds are, find Amy, and stop whatever Eggman's plan is. Does that sound right?"

"Yep," Sonic agreed. He jumped onto the wing of the plane. "Alright, let's get going!"

Knuckles climbed into the back seat. He took one last look at the Master Emerald, sitting on its shrine, vulnerable to thieves. He shook the feeling off. The Emerald would be fine. "Next stop, Westopolis!" he yelled enthusiastically.

Tails pressed a button, and the Tornado came to life. Its propeller became a blur of speed. The plane took off, leaving Angel Island, and then swooped down low again. And so the journey to Westopolis began. For some time, the Tornado flew in complete silence. Then Sonic decided to start a discussion. "Which Chaos Emerald is the best one?" he asked.

"How is that even a question?" Tails laughed. "I don't know, the purple one."

"No. Green Emerald, all the way," Knuckles argued. "It's the only one that's technically an emerald anyway. You gotta choose the green one."

"The green and purple Emeralds are kinda cool, but the blue and cyan ones are easily the best," Sonic said. "They have the most epic colours."

"Isn't this question just a more awesome version of 'what's your favourite colour'?" Knuckles pointed out.

Tails shrugged. "We need to fill up some more time somehow."

As the Tornado flew over the ocean, the chatter continued. The three heroes talked about all sorts of trivial things. For about an hour, they kept flying. Eventually, they were over Westopolis. It was becoming dark, and the lights of the city below were all on, brightening the night sky with a multitude of colours. Tails expertly manoeuvred the plane down until it was parked neatly on the ground. "Well… here we are," he stated. "Westopolis. Let's try to find Shadow and G.U.N."

"No need," a voice behind them said. The three turned around to see a human standing behind them. He was fairly tall, had grey hair, and was wearing an official-looking uniform. One of his eyes was brown, and the other was a greenish-blue colour. "I am the current commander of this branch of G.U.N.," he continued. "I will be showing you the way to our base. Team Dark is awaiting your arrival."

 **And there you go! We have The Commander Guy From Edgy The Hedgy here, and soon we'll have Shadow. This'll be interesting. I'm going to leave this chapter off right here, so please leave a review, follow, favourite (maybe?), and have a good day. I will see all you people in the next chapter!**


	12. Chapter 12: Team Dark

**Chapter 12 - Team Dark**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Thank you for the support! You took the words out of my mouth there (not literally. That would be not only impossible, but also kinda gross). That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to do with Sonic here. *doesn't push you off a 3 foot fence* Hype for Team Dark! Well, enough of me talking, enjoy this chapter! :D**

 **Well, after far too long, Legacy is back in action! Sorry about the wait. I was really busy and suffering from a bit of writer's block, but don't worry, I'm not giving up on this story.**

 **So, what's happened since I last updated? The biggest one is that I moved house. Crazy, huh? Packing and unpacking and moving and rearranging stuff took up a lot of time, which is the main thing that cut into my writing time. But I'm pretty much done with all of that, so that won't be making things slow anymore. I put a lot of the time I had into working on A Tale Of Origins, which you can read if you like (shameless plugging intensifies). Let's see, what else… got Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (which is REALLY good, by the way. It's much better than either of its predecessors. If you aren't sure whether to get it or not, I suggest that you give it a chance), completed the main story two days later, got through a storm that cut off my ENTIRE STATE from power, sat down and played through S3&K as Knuckles for the first time, got all the Super Emeralds for the first time, wasted a lot of time on the internet, blah, blah, blah, etc. etc. etc., all that kinda stuff. Nothing really important.**

 **Nobody likes ridiculously long notes, so let's just get on with the story!**

"Are we almost there?" Sonic asked after a few minutes of walking.

The commander sighed. "We're approximately halfway. Keep going." The silence returned. After another minute, he spoke again. "As you may or may not know, the blue Chaos Emerald is currently in our possession. Over the past days, Shadow has negotiated with us on numerous occasions, and we have agreed to hand it to your team. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands under any circumstances, and do not let anybody use it who may misuse its power, intentionally or unintentionally."

He looked right at Sonic as he said the last part. The hedgehog picked up on the stare. "What?" he asked defensively. "Oh, I get it. Because I'm turning into a robot-" he held his arm out to emphasise his point - "you think I'm gonna start being evil. Well, you're wrong." He folded his arms and smiled. "Come on, commander guy whose name I forgot. Don't you remember who I am? I'm Sonic the Hedgehog. I don't do evil."

"I never said that," the commander argued. They arrived at a tall military complex made of concrete. It was surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire and had security cameras almost everywhere. "We're here." He walked to the gate, which had a scanner of some sort. Pulling an identity card from his pocket, the commander swiped it in the scanner. A green light lit up on the scanner and the gate opened. He walked through the gate, motioning for the other three to follow.

Shadow, Rouge and Omega were waiting at the doors of the building. "Good evening, Commander Tower," Shadow said with a formal salute. "I see you brought Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles."

"Yes. I will give you all some time to brief each other on your present situation," Tower explained. "Given the time, you may stay overnight if you wish."

"Thank you, Commander," Shadow responded. He turned to his friends. "Come on, you three. Let's go."

xX*Xx

They entered the building. Taking a few turns, they went through a door that led to what looked like a small house connected to the main base. "Here's where Team Dark lives," Shadow explained. "It may not look like much, but it has everything that we need. Anyway, welcome back, Sonic."

"Good to see you again, faker," the blue hedgehog responded.

"How are you all?" Rouge asked. "Have things been going well?"

"It's been great!" Tails answered happily.

The conversation continued. The two teams fired questions at each other. After a while, Omega unexpectedly changed the topic. _"SHADOW, ROUGE, YOU OUGHT TO TELL THEM."_

"About wha- oh. No, that isn't important," Shadow said.

 _"_ _IF YOU REFUSE TO RECOUNT THESE EVENTS, I WILL EXPLAIN THEM MYSELF."_

Rouge blushed. "Omega, I don't think that you need to say anything about-"

Ignoring Shadow and Rouge's protesting, Omega turned to the other three, saying, _"SHADOW AND ROUGE HAVE BEEN GOING OUT FOR TWO YEARS. SHADOW ASKED ROUGE ON A DATE SOME TIME AGO. SHE SAID YES. THEY ARE CURRENTLY DATING."_

There was silence. Sonic then clapped enthusiastically. "I didn't think you had it in you, Shadz!"

"Was that a compliment or an insult?" Shadow asked.

Knuckles blinked. "Rouge and Shadow?" he repeated. "I mean, that's great for them. I don't have a problem with that." Noticing his friends' stares, he tried to defend himself. "What? Quit looking at me like that!"

Laughing, Sonic turned back to look at Shadow and Rouge. "Seriously, guys. Congratulations. That's awesome."

Shadow smiled briefly. "Thanks."

xX*Xx

In his underground bunker, Eggman worked restlessly at his computer. He pressed a few keys and opened some programs. A world map appeared in front of the many other windows. In the area representing Westopolis, a red light was flashing. The doctor grinned to himself, knowing exactly where his nemesis was. "Visiting the G.U.N. base, are you?" he asked, ignoring the fact that he knew the answer, and that Sonic couldn't hear him. "Let me see if I can use this. Hmm…" He continued to type things in, and in doing so, expertly manipulating the code within Sonic's body.

"Finally, it's ready," Eggman muttered to himself after ten minutes. "Now, just brush against some kind of core computer asset. Come on, hedgehog, help me out here."

On the other side of the world, the members of the teams were continuing their discussion. "It looked like we were facing certain defeat," Rouge retold dramatically. "The gang had us surrounded. There were at least fifteen members, all armed, and all of them up against Shadow and me. I'm obviously a skilled fighter, and Shadow's powerful, but we definitely couldn't take them all out. I tried to reason with them. I told them that if they let us leave in one piece, we would leave them alone-"

"She told them that if they didn't back off, she'd come to their house at night and take everything they own," Shadow interrupted. "And yes, she still steals, even though she's working for the government. This is Rouge we're talking about here."

"…Shadow, that was unnecessary," Rouge complained. "Continuing, we thought we were done for. The gang members were strong in numbers, and it's not like Shadow could've Chaos Controlled us out of there. We didn't have the Emerald on us. It was too risky. But then, out of nowhere, Omega comes and saves us!"

"Really?" Tails asked excitedly.

"Yep! He came along and picked up at least five of them, throwing them into the ground. Then he started charging up some lasers, which scared the rest of them off. It was an amazing way to end the mission!" Rouge confirmed. "So, we wrapped up the case, arrested those responsible for the mass thievery, and saved the day."

Omega held up one giant, mechanical hand. _"I DO NOT CHARGE FOR HIGH FIVES,"_ he said.

"Was that a joke?" Sonic asked. "Wow, this guy is the most awesome robot ever!" He laughed reached his right hand up to high-five Omega.

"Yes!" Eggman shouted victoriously underground. A loading bar appeared on his screen, which filled almost immediately. The new files automatically opened, and he began to scan through the documents.

In Westopolis, Sonic winced, pulling his hand back. "Ow."

"What is it?" Knuckles asked.

"I think it's just static electricity or something. I'm fine."

Eggman continued to read the top-secret files that were now on his computer. "Ooh, this is just wonderful! Very interesting… very interesting indeed. And they have a Chaos Emerald, right here! I'll have to send somebody in to take it, then…" He opened his communications and set up a link. "Extreme Team, are you there?"

There was silence for almost two minutes. Then a tired, irritated voice came. _"Dude, it's three AM this side of the world. Ever heard of time zones?"_

"You can sleep later. I happen to know that if you get to the G.U.N. base at Westopolis, you can get a Chaos Emerald! All you need to do is fly over there, sneak into the base, hack into their systems to open all the safes, and then just go searching for the right one."

 _"_ _Ooh, hacking! I can do that,"_ another person jumped in. This one was female. _"How much time do we have?"_

"Where are you now?"

 _"_ _We're pretty close to Pumpkin Hill Mountain,"_ the first person said.

"If you get going right now, you'll have a good hour before most people in that time zone would wake up. Less talk, more hacking and stealing."

 _"_ _Why do you need all three of us goin', though?"_ a third voice asked. _"We only gotta hack something and get this Emerald. That's a one-person job, ain't it?"_

"Because you'll probably be fighting, with the luck I've had recently," Eggman responded. "I would usually be able to provide backup, but I don't have enough power to help you with that. If you trip an alarm, there will probably be reinforcements from the military, too. The clock is ticking. Hurry up!"

 _"_ _Yeah, okay. We'll bring you the Emerald when we're done,"_ the first voice said. With that, he disconnected himself and the other members of the 'Extreme Team' from the call.

xX*Xx

After another ten minutes of Shadow, Rouge and Omega describing their missions stopping illegal trades and threats to the government and such things, Shadow changed the topic. "Back to your side of things, the hell happened to you?" he asked, looking at Sonic.

"That's EXACTLY what I asked," Knuckles butted in.

Sonic facepalmed. "It's the same question every flipping time… whatever. What exactly are you referring to?"

"You already told us about how you came back and a vague recount of what you've done so far. There's only one thing I would logically be talking about right now. Connect the dots," Shadow responded. "What's with the robot look?"

 _"_ _SCANS SHOW THAT NON-ORGANIC MATERIAL IS AT 32 PERCENT. NON-ORGANIC MATERIAL APPEARS TO BE REPLACING ORGANIC MATERIAL. WITHOUT INTERVENTION, 100 PERCENT WILL BE REACHED WITHIN ONE WEEK,"_ Omega added.

"Th… that's more than I thought it was," Sonic muttered to himself. He shook the feeling off and continued talking. "Well, you know how Eggman used corrupted energy of evilness or something to send me to a dividing by zero error? It's also turning me into, and I quote Knuckles, a 'Metal Sonic'. (Knuckles raised his hands, saying, "Somebody had to say it.") But we're working on it. That's somewhere else the Chaos Emeralds come in handy, because they bring me back to normal a bit. Why that happens, I don't know. But it does, because reasons, so that's nice. There's also the fact that it's spreading really fast, and a tiny issue with Eggman not actually being gone and instead trying to use me to attack my friends sometimes. But that's basically the whole story."

"Oh. That's it?" Shadow asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, pretty much."

Tails looked at the clock. 12:37 AM. "It's getting really late," he said. "Is there somewhere we can get some sleep?"

Rouge jumped to the task. She left the room and came back a second later with some blankets. She threw one over the couch, another on an armchair, put one on the floor as a sort of mattress, and dropped another on top of it. "That should do it!" she announced. "Does that look right to you? This isn't exactly my field of expertise. I'm an incredibly beautiful jewel thief and government spy, not a maid."

"That'll work," Knuckles shrugged. "I call dibs on the sofa."

xX*Xx

Sonic lay awake, long after the rest of his team had gone to sleep. Tails had beaten him to the chair, so he was trying to get some sleep on the floor. It had only been a few hours, and his right arm was already back to the way it had been that morning. The cybernetic enhancements were beginning to creep down along the side of his body, too. At this rate, he wouldn't have much time. What had Omega said? A week. Seven days to reunite his team, collect all of the Chaos Emeralds, discover Eggman's plan, stop it, and get himself back to normal for good. That wasn't much. Sure, the power of the Emeralds would buy him some extra time, but only a few days.

He told himself to stop. He was going to be fine, his friends weren't in any danger, and the world would be safe. Sighing, Sonic rolled over again, trying to get comfortable. This wasn't normal. He didn't usually give it that much thought - it was normal by this point, and after about a year of slowly being changed into someone else, it wasn't really a big deal anymore. Why was he lying awake at two in the morning thinking about it? Okay, so he knew the answer to that. He had fought his friends that day, tried to hurt them, and been unable to stop himself. When you're forced to go into battle with your friends, you don't exactly just shrug it off. He had learnt that immediately the first time it had happened, when he was still with Silver and Blaze. It was hard, knowing that he was fighting the people he fought to protect, but not being able to do anything about it. But it was just something that happened now, and as hard as it was, he had come to accept it. And he usually tried to put a positive spin on the situation. Sometimes, it was pretty useful. His mechanical arm was stronger and more powerful than it had been before, and he wasn't certain, but he was pretty sure that his speed had been slightly enhanced. Things could be worse, really.

While it took some time, fatigue eventually took over. Sonic felt his consciousness slip, and he finally fell asleep.

xX*Xx

The sun had barely begun to peek over the horizon. The G.U.N. base was suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of alarms. Every PA system blared out the same warning siren. Covering his ears, Sonic stood up half-consciously. He rubbed his eyes and tried to force himself to wake up. "It's like five in the morning, what the hell…" he mumbled tiredly.

Team Dark was already alert. Shadow and Rouge ran from the bedroom. "What's happening?" Shadow asked. He went to Omega, who was charging in the corner, and turned the robot on. "Omega, what's going on?"

 _"_ _SECURITY FOOTAGE SHOWS THREE UNIDENTIFIED CRIMINALS, ALL BIRDS, ALL RIDING SIMILAR HOVERBOARDS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, ALL WEARING SUNGLASSES, BREAKING INTO THE VAULT WHERE THE BLUE CHAOS EMERALD IS BEING KEPT,"_ Omega answered. _"IT APPEARS THEY HAVE HACKED INTO THE SECURITY SYSTEM TO GET IN WITHOUT SETTING OFF ANY ALARMS OR SECURITY SYSTEMS. THEY TRIPPED AN ALARM WHILE OPENING THE SAFE. RECOMMENDED ACTION IS TO CORNER THEM AND FORCE THEM TO SURRENDER."_

Tails gasped. "That sounds like the Babylon Rogues!" he pointed out. "Judging by what we've gone through so far, they're probably working for Eggman!"

"Oh, yeah, you're right," Knuckles agreed. "Let's go, then!"

The heroes ran through corridors and down stairs. The alarms kept blaring the whole time, which at least helped Sonic to wake up. When they reached the vault, their suspicions were confirmed. Three birds, Jet, Wave and Storm, had evidently been trying to break into a safe when they had been caught. They turned around when the team entered. "Well, that's just great," Jet sighed. "Nice hacking, Wave. Really frigging discreet. How could these guys have possibly noticed us?"

"Shut it, Jet," Wave shot back. "This is the military we're talking about. It's a miracle we got this far undetected in the first place."

"Can we fight them or something?" Storm asked. "Beat 'em up, take the Chaos Emerald, give it to the boss, and leave. That's what we should do, right?"

"You are breaking and entering a G.U.N. facility," Shadow said. "You have violated multiple laws, and reinforcements will come to arrest you once we have taken you down."

Rouge sighed. "Do you really have to go over that whole legal thing you're talking about every single time we find somebody we have to get arrested?"

"If we're going to get paid, then yes."

Ignoring Shadow and Rouge, Jet turned to Sonic. "Long time no see, Sonic," he smirked. "It's been a long time since I fought you. This time, I'll show you that I'm the fastest thing on the planet. And I'll have the security footage here to prove it."

"We're having a fight, not a race, bird brain," Sonic pointed out. "But I accept your challenge."

The combatants faced each other. Jet, Wave and Storm, the infamous Babylon Rouges, against Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Team Dark, for possession of the blue Chaos Emerald. It would be an intense battle for sure.

Jet walked forward. Sonic did the same. They stared each other down for a moment, the tension rising. Then the hedgehog made the first move, his fist moving out in a split second to catch his rival by surprise. The bird retaliated with a swift kick.

And within a few seconds, all hell broke loose.

 **At long last… I finished this. Yay! Shadow's theme song will be 'All Hail Shadow', the original version by Magna-Fi. (The only song that Crush 40 actually didn't make better.) Next chapter, we'll have an epic battle! Who's ready for a big dumb fight scene? Yeah, only two chapters' break, and now everybody's beating each other up again. I hope it'll be awesome. Well, hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you did, please leave a review, and tell me what you liked and what I can improve. I will see you all in the next chapter, and have a great day!**

 **BEFORE I FORGET AGAIN. I will translate the code gibberish from chapter 9. That took way too long for me to do, I know. I'M SORRY.**

 ** _WELL THEN, SONIC. I SEE THAT YOU FOUND A WAY TO BRING YOURSELF BACK TO NORMAL. I HAVE TO SAY, A PART OF ME ADMIRES YOUR DETERMINATION… BUT ANOTHER PART OF ME IS FURIOUS. WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO OPPOSE ME, EVEN WHEN I AM SLOWLY TAKING OVER YOUR THOUGHTS?! IT DOESN'T HELP MATTERS THAT SNIPER HAD TO GO AND TELL YOU MY PLANS… BUT I SUPPOSE HE DID HELP ME TO GAIN CONTROL OVER YOU MUCH MORE EFFICIENTLY. MOVING ON. YOUR NEW FREEDOM WON'T LAST LONG. AS I SPEAK, MY INFLUENCE IS RETURNING. YOU DON'T HAVE LONG, I MUST ADD. A WEEK IF YOU'RE LUCKY, MORE IF YOU DO WHATEVER YOU JUST DID AGAIN. I WILL TRY TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOU AGAIN SOON. I DOUBT YOU WILL LET ME DO SO FOR LONG. YOU NEVER GAVE UP, EVEN WHEN I WAS SURE TO WIN. BUT THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO, WHEN ALL THIS WAS MORE OF A GAME THAN ANYTHING. THIS TIME, I WILL NOT BE AS MERCIFUL. THIS TIME, YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED AT THE LAST SECOND BY PURE CHANCE. THIS TIME, WE ARE NOT PLAYING A GAME. THIS TIME… IT'S WAR. AND THIS TIME, I WILL WIN. IF I'M LUCKY, YOU MAY EVEN HELP ME TO DO SO._**


	13. Chapter 13: Extreme Action

**Chapter 13 - Extreme Action**

 **Dear firewaterwarriorKats: Yay, Team Dark! Time for edginess! *sighs in relief because I'm not the only Shadouge shipper* I thought I was the only person who liked that ship XD why do people not like Shadouge? Anyways… yeah, it was pretty obvious that it was the Babylon Rogues. That's one of the reasons I just threw them in right away. It's annoying when there's suspense that doesn't add anything because you know what it is, so I decided 'what the hell let's just do this'. Hope you enjoy this fight!**

 **Dear Guest: Aww, thank you! :) Glad you like it!**

 **Dear xXMannaXx: Haha, thanks! I'm sure my writing isn't that good, you're exaggerating ;) Don't tell anyone the code, you'll ruin the suspense XD Anyways, thank you for reading and listening to me talking about this in real life all the time, lol. Enjoy this chapter!**

 **So… this was on hiatus for a long time. I'm really, really sorry. Between writer's block, school getting more intense, internet connectivity issues, and losing the USB drive this was saved on, progress was… slow. I hope nobody thought this story was dead. It's not, I promise. I do have good news, though. The cover finally went up, huzzah! I worked on it for a long time, and I have to say, I'm pretty satisfied with the end result, even though my cruddy scanner screwed up the colours. Leave me some feedback! Is it good?**

 **Also, late happy Halloween! (I guess Sonic has his costume sorted out…) (was that an insensitive joke I hope not)**

 **Anyways, chapter. (I'm sorry about the bad pun name.) Get ready for a fight scene! I'm not going to spoil anything, but… something happens which you might not expect. Instead of rambling on forever, I'm just going to get right into it. So let's go!**

The fight escalated quickly. Within seconds, it was a mess of action. Sonic and Jet dodged blows and insults from each other. Shadow tackled Jet, who pushed him off and into Wave. She kicked Shadow. Tails came at her. Jet came to Wave's rescue. Knuckles pushed him to the side. Storm punched Knuckles. Knuckles punched back. Rouge kicked Storm in the leg. He shoved her away. She ran back at him, but he was ready and pushed her down. Sonic continued to fight Jet. Shadow stood up and went to help Sonic. Omega picked Storm up and threw him. Tails and Wave got into an intense battle involving equal amounts of physical and verbal attacks. Jet pushed Sonic and Shadow away. Omega came and pulled him off his feet. Storm finally got up and attacked Omega. The robot flung him off, but dropped Jet in the process. Knuckles got into a punch battle with Storm. Rouge helped Sonic and Shadow up. It continued.

Eventually, somebody intervened. A PA system on the wall turned on. _"Stop wasting time and attack strategically!"_ Commander Tower yelled. His voice surprised the combatants, who stopped for a moment, then kept fighting, although they paid attention. _"Shadow, Sonic, you're the fastest. You two go on Jet. Rouge and Tails, you would both be the most efficient against Wave. Omega and Knuckles, you're our heavy-hitters. Focus on Storm."_

"Wait, how come you know who these guys are?" Sonic asked.

There was a noise from the speaker like the commander facepalming. _"Because they're well-known criminals, and because I'm a commander. Quit being a smart-mouth. Do not let the Babylon Rogues take that Emerald."_

"Understood," Shadow confirmed. He turned to Sonic. "Let's take him out."

"I was hoping I would get to beat up Jet," Sonic agreed, and charged. The bird ducked just in time to avoid a fist in the face.

Shadow came up behind them and tried to knock his enemy over. Jet dodged it. "Come on," he complained. "Can you stop talking about me like I'm not here?" He punched Sonic, who avoided it and punched back.

Tails quickly attacked Wave, who retaliated instantly. They defended each other's punching and kicking, all while insulting each other.

"Get out of my way, shorty!"

"No way, bird brain!"

"You couldn't build anything halfway decent if you tried!"

"I bet that the only thing you know anything about is air boards!"

"It's called Extreme Gear, stupid!"

"Not as stupid as that name!"

"When we get back to Eggman, I'll make sure he promises to aim for you first!"

There was a gasp from the commander, but he hid it well. _"Doctor Eggman is back?"_ he asked through the loudspeaker.

"Yeah, we were gonna get round to telling you that, but these jokers showed up," Sonic called from where he and Jet were beating the snot out of each other.

Apparently not listening, Tails and Wave kept screaming at each other. Rouge suddenly kicked Wave, knocking her to the ground. "Hello? I'm in this battle too, you know," she pointed out. Wave stood up and aimed for her, but she stepped to the side effortlessly. "And I'm a trained spy."

While Sonic and Shadow continued fighting Jet, and Wave kept defending herself from Tails and Rouge, Knuckles, Omega and Storm got into a battle of their own. Storm and Knuckles immediately started throwing punches at each other. Storm grabbed Knuckles' hat and threw it to the side. "Hey!" Knuckles yelled, picking it up. Storm used the opportunity to shove him roughly. "That's not fair!" the echidna shouted at him.

Omega intervened, grabbing Storm by the arm. _"RESISTANCE IS FUTILE,"_ he told the bird, who struggled to free himself. The robot paused, then added, _"I SOUND LIKE A STEREOTYPICAL ROBOT BRINGING ON THE APOCALYPSE. I SHOULD FIND SOME BETTER LINES."_

"How about we deal with this guy first and worry about clichés later?" Knuckles suggested, standing up. He made sure his hat was firmly on his head, then walked up to Storm and said, "Okay, moron, lights out." In one swift move, he punched the albatross, nearly knocking him out. He moved in for another hit, but Storm broke free of Omega.

"Hey, cut it out!" Storm complained, pushing Knuckles to the side. He turned back to Omega and started hitting randomly. "Go down, ya stupid robot! C'mon, get outta here! Quit tryin' to resist! I'm gonna turn ya into… scrap metal…?" He slowed down and then stopped, realising that his fists had no effect on Omega.

The robot picked Storm up again. _"NO, YOU GO DOWN,"_ he argued. He then took the statement to literal extremes, dropping the bird on the ground. Storm made a strange noise and forced himself to stand up, clearly having a hard time doing so.

Knuckles picked himself up and punched Storm again. "Just get KO'd already!" he yelled.

Storm spun around from the punch, then fell over and didn't get up. He mumbled something that sounded like "Yeah, gran, I'll take another gingersnap," then closed his eyes, knocked out. Knuckles and Omega high-fived.

From his battle, Sonic yelled, "Great work, guys!" He returned his attention to making sure that Jet didn't kick his teeth in. "Hey, that isn't nice," he told the hawk. "Stop it."

"Get out of my way, slowpoke," Jet shot back, pushing Sonic to the ground. Shadow came from behind and slammed into him. "Oh, come on!" Jet yelled, struggling to shake the hedgehog off him. "Isn't two on one kinda frigging unfair? Some heroes you guys are!"

"You should've brought more team members," Shadow told him, still firmly pinning him to the ground.

Sonic got up, shaking his head to clear it. "Ow," he muttered, then raced around Jet, hitting him from all directions. "Who's the slowpoke now?" he teased.

Shadow suddenly dropped Jet, grabbing the fingers of his left hand. "You stepped on my hand, what the hell?!" he shouted at Sonic.

"Sorry!" Sonic quickly apologised, then screamed as Jet tackled him. "Give it a break!" he yelled, dodging attacks left and right.

Rouge and Wave had gotten into a fight, kicking at each other and shouting. "I need that Chaos Emerald! Let go!' Wave screamed, as Rouge held her down and aimed more attacks. She pushed the bat to the ground and punched her several times.

"Aaaah! Stop it!" Rouge shouted, moving to the side. "That jewel needs to stay here! It's so important that I only tried to steal it twice!"

Tails came up behind Wave and jerked his elbow into her back, sending her to the ground. "Don't hurt her!" he yelled.

"Thanks, cutie," Rouge said, winking at Tails.

The fox laughed nervously, but it turned into a gasp when he saw Wave stand up. "Look out!" he warned Rouge, just before the swallow kicked her legs out from underneath her. He grabbed Wave by the arm and pulled her away before she could hurt Rouge any more.

"What are you doing? Don't touch me, you freak!" Wave shrieked, shaking her arm until Tails let go.

 _"_ _Omega, Knuckles, don't just stand there now that you've taken out Storm!"_ Commander Tower instructed through the loudspeaker. _"Omega, help out Rouge and Tails. Knuckles, go and give Shadow and Sonic some support. And for pity's sake, be more careful with that hat. It's really nice looking, and you shouldn't let anyone damage it."_

"Thank you," Knuckles replied.

 _"_ _I was being sarcastic. I meant don't let it cost you the battle!"_

"Thank you for nothing," Knuckles corrected himself.

xX*Xx

"Surprise!" Knuckles yelled as he tackled Jet from behind.

"Three on one? Come on!" Jet groaned, pushing Knuckles to the side. "This is hardly a fair fight. Isn't this cheating somehow?" Sonic threw his fist at Jet, but he ducked. "It doesn't matter, I'm gonna win anyway," he proclaimed, kicking the blue hedgehog in the back.

On the other side of the fight, Omega and Rouge watched as Tails and Wave beat the heck out of each other. "They really hate each other, don't they?" Rouge commented, as Wave used more swear words in a single description of her enemy than most people would know the meaning of.

 _"_ _YES,"_ Omega confirmed. _"OUT OF ALL RECORDED INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TAILS AND WAVE, NONE IN MY DATABASE HAVE A POSITIVE ENDING."_

"You know, Omega, the only reason I prefer Shadow to you is that he doesn't ruin rhetorical questions with useless factual information," Rouge complained. "Wait, why do you know what they've said to each other?"

 _"_ _BECAUSE I AM AWESOME,"_ Omega replied sarcastically. _"AND BECAUSE I HAVE ACCESS TO SECURITY FOOTAGE FROM AROUND THE WORLD."_

"Point taken," Rouge sighed. She paused. Tails told Wave something that should never be repeated. Wincing, the bat added, "Innocent fourteen-year-old my foot. Do you think we should help him out?"

 _"_ _GOOD IDEA,"_ Omega agreed. He walked over, picked Wave up, and held her in place. _"RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. …I NEED TO STOP SAYING THAT, IT SOUNDS STUPID."_

"You _are_ stupid!" Wave shot back, struggling. "Get off me!"

Omega didn't let go. _"BUUURN. DAGGERS IN MY HEART. I AM SO OFFENDED,"_ he said.

Tails laughed. "You're temporarily the best person in this room," he told Omega. "Thanks for the save."

 _"_ _ONLY TEMPORARILY? I AM DISAPPOINTED."_

Back to the other combatants, Sonic grabbed Jet's foot just before it made contact with his back again. The bird screamed in surprise and fell over. Knuckles took advantage of the situation and gave him an uppercut. Jet cried out again, but the punch hadn't knocked him out. He slammed his fist into Knuckles' chest. The echidna went down. Shadow and Sonic simultaneously ran at Jet, but he pushed them both off. "Come at me! I'll take you all out!" he yelled. Sonic and Shadow instantly got up and hit him from all directions. "I didn't mean that literally!" Jet added hastily. "Stop it!"

Knuckles stood up shakily and went to help out Sonic and Shadow. The three heroes landed hit after hit on Jet, making contact almost every time. After a while, they stopped. Shadow grabbed Jet and held him up. "Alright. We're going to knock him out now," he said. "Care to do the honours, Sonic?"

"Don't mind if I do," Sonic agreed. He clenched his right hand into a fist. "I'll try to make this quick," he told Jet. His fist moved at blinding speed. But somehow, the bird was ready, and his hand shot up, grabbing Sonic's. They were locked in an intense battle for a few seconds, both trying to overcome the other's strength. Then Jet managed to gain the upper hand, and pushed Sonic backwards. He kicked backwards, hitting Shadow in the stomach. The black hedgehog let go, and Jet ran. Sonic recovered quickly. He saw Jet racing for the safe where the Chaos Emerald was kept, and immediately gave chase. "Get back here!" he shouted.

"Just give up!" Jet shouted back. He kicked desperately at the safe's keypad, trying to force the strong metal door to open. Sonic pulled him away before he could do any more damage. The hedgehog and hawk began to fight, Jet attempting to break open the safe, Sonic stopping him from doing so.

Sonic focused entirely on stopping Jet from reaching the safe. _If he gets that thing open, he's gonna take the Chaos Emerald. You can't let that happen. You need to stop Eggman from getting the Emeralds. If he gets them, he'll take over the world. That would be bad. And you need them to get yourself back to normal. There's probably a limit on the time you can be comfortable with having weapons installed in your hand or however that works- wait!_ Something clicked in Sonic's mind. Of course! He turned his head to Shadow and Knuckles and called out, "Hey, guys! Can you keep this guy busy for a while? I have an idea!"

"We're on it!" Knuckles confirmed. He and Shadow joined the battle, preventing Jet from getting too close to the Chaos Emerald. Sonic shot them a thumbs up and left, thinking his plan through. _As annoying as he is, I don't want to hurt Jet too badly, so a direct shot is out of the question. But if I just hit the ground near him and create an explosion…_

xX*Xx

Meanwhile, Wave struggled to free herself from Omega's grip. She managed to partially escape, and lashed out at Tails. He jumped out of the way. Wave kept trying, kicking both at the robot and at anybody within a metre of her. Somehow, after a lot of thrashing around, she got herself away from Omega. She watched as Jet tried to force the safe open, and ran in his direction. "Hold on, Jet, I'm coming to help!" she shouted.

"No, you're not." With this comment, a high-heeled foot slammed into the back of Wave's head. She cried out and fell to the ground, staying there. Rouge flapped her wings slowly, letting herself down gently. "As I seem to have to remind you continuously, I'm fighting this battle too, you know," she pointed out. "That's two down and one to go. Great work, guys!"

 _"_ _Good job, Rouge, Omega, Tails,"_ Commander Tower said through the speaker. _"Two down and one to go. Focus on Jet now. You're almost done with this fight."_

"COME ON!" Jet shouted angrily. "THIS ISN'T A FAIR FRIGGING BATTLE!" He continued defending himself from Shadow and Knuckles' attacks. Tails, Omega and Rouge were quickly on him too, and he barely managed to fend them all off.

From the other side of the room, Sonic had figured out what to do. He concentrated, and while it took some time, he finally made his right hand transform into the energy cannon. "Guys, step away from Jet! I got this!" he called out. His friends moved out of the way, leaving Jet confused. Sonic aimed. His cannon charged, then fired.

As he had hoped, the shot hit the ground, creating a blast that would knock somebody out, but not kill them. Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan. Jet jumped out of the way before the explosion could hit him. Instead, the full force of the blast went towards the person standing behind him.

Tails flew backwards, slammed into the wall behind him, and fell to the ground.

Knuckles jumped back in surprise, causing his hat to fall off. Shadow said one of the rudest swear words in the English language. Rouge gasped. Omega pushed over Jet, who was laughing. It took a second or two for Sonic to register what had happened. He ran to Tails, picking him up. The fox didn't move. His eyes were closed. Sonic panicked. "NO!" He turned to the others and forced out a few terrified words. "He's… he isn't moving!"

Shadow swore again. He looked at Knuckles, Rouge and Omega. "You three take out Jet! I'm helping with this!" he instructed. Without waiting for an answer, he ran to where Sonic was desperately shaking Tails. "Hey, stop it," he said. "Don't shake him in case he's badly hurt."

Sonic buried his face in his hands. "This… this is all my fault…" he said quietly. The note of terror in his voice was unmistakeable.

"No, it's not," Shadow reassured him. "He's going to be fine. Hang on, let me check if that's true." He put two fingers on Tails' wrist. "Yep, his heart's still beating. It's a little irregular, but he's alright. Just unconscious."

Knuckles punched Jet in the face, hard. The hawk made an odd squawking noise and fell. "That's all of them down!" Rouge announced excitedly. "Commander, let's get some troops in here and arrest these three."

 _"_ _Excellent work,"_ Tower said. _"I'm sending in some forces to handcuff them and take them to prison. They'll probably be there for a while."_

xX*Xx

Right on cue, four soldiers in uniforms rushed into the room. One took out some handcuffs and put them on the unconscious Rogues. He then picked up Jet and led him away. Another one took Wave, and the two others worked together to drag Storm out of the room. Once the three birds had been taken away, Rouge typed on the keypad next to the safe. She entered the numbers _49732017_ , and the door swung open. She took out the blue Chaos Emerald. "Here it is," she pointed out somewhat unnecessarily.

Omega looked at Tails. _"SCANNING…"_ he said. _"SCAN COMPLETE. VITAL SIGNS ARE MOSTLY STABLE, BUT SOMEWHAT IRREGULAR. IT WOULD BE SAFEST TO BRING HIM BACK TO CONSCIOUSNESS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."_

"Right. Pass me the Chaos Emerald," Shadow told Rouge. She gave him the blue jewel. "I'm going to send a small surge of Chaos energy through him. It should wake him up and deal with any injuries," explained Shadow. He held the Chaos Emerald in his right hand and placed the other on Tails' chest. For a while, he concentrated, and then shouted, "Chaos CONTROL!"

The Emerald shone brightly. Its energy travelled through Shadow, enhanced by his Chaos Control abilities, and out of his other hand. Tails was briefly surrounded by the blue light, and seemed to float for a second before he landed on the ground again. Shadow stood up. "There. He should come around within the next minute or two."

Knuckles placed a hand on Sonic's shoulder. The hedgehog had turned away from everyone else, and didn't react to the gesture. "Hey, none of this is your fault, okay?" Knuckles told him. "So stop sitting there and feeling bad about yourself, and start being ready to check if he's still good to go. Alright?"

xX*Xx

A minute passed. It seemed like an hour. Then, at last, Tails coughed, sat up, and put a hand on his forehead. "Ow, that hurt…" he mumbled.

"Good, you're awake. Are you-" Shadow began, but he was cut off.

Sonic practically tackled Tails in a hug, pulling the fox to his feet. He sighed in relief, his shoulders shaking. "Oh, man, thank god you're okay," he said quietly.

Tails couldn't help but laugh, hugging back. "Yeah, I'm fine. My head kind of hurts, but I think I'm okay."

"Let's check. How many fingers am I holding up?" Shadow asked, holding up two fingers.

Turning his attention back to the ultimate life form, Tails answered, "Two."

"Great. Do you remember my name?"

"Well, yeah, of course. You're Shadow. You're the dark and edgy one."

Ignoring the laughter from his friends, Shadow continued the interrogation. "Wow, subtle. Can you tell me what happened in the lead-up to you getting knocked out?"

After a few seconds' thought, Tails started recapping. "We were fighting the Babylon Rogues. Wave and Storm were down, so we all beat up Jet. He was fending us off somehow. That was around when I was knocked out. Sonic tried to take Jet out in one hit, and then…"

He broke off, looking at his friend. Sonic looked at the ground. "…I'm sorry," he sighed.

"What? No! This isn't your fault," Tails reassured him quickly. "All that happened was that Jet dodged it, and I was standing behind him. You didn't mean for anything bad to happen, right?"

Sonic paused, then smiled weakly. "…Right."

xX*Xx

After five or so minutes of people checking every door and computer system in the building for security faults, Commander Tower came into the room where the fight had taken place. "Well, as commander of G.U.N., I hereby give you permission to take our Chaos Emerald," he stated. "Good luck, you three."

Shadow took a deep breath to interrupt. "About that. Could we bump that number up to four? I'd like to go with them and assist them. As Wave said, Dr. Robotnik has returned, and there are currently only three of our best fighters ready to go up against him. Rouge and Omega could remain here as Team Dark, but I request that I leave for a time."

"Hmm…" the commander muttered. "I suppose that the fight against Eggman could use all the power it can get. Rouge, Omega, would you agree to stay here and continue your active duties on Team Dark?"

"Alright," said Rouge.

 _"_ _THAT SOUNDS REASONABLE,"_ Omega agreed.

Tower nodded. "Well then, it's settled. Take the Emerald and leave. We'll keep Eggman's return quiet unless he becomes a real threat again. Good luck, Shadow."

"Thank you, Commander," Shadow said with a salute. Turning to the others, he continued, "Let's go. There's no time to lose."

So the heroes walked outside, Tower following. "Oh, don't forget this!" Rouge reminded Sonic, holding out the blue Emerald.

"Thanks," Sonic said. He took it, but something caught his attention. The blue one… Upon picking it up, nothing happened. The blinding flash of light didn't come, and Sonic didn't change. There was an awkward silence as it sunk in, then Sonic nodded, as if he had expected this. "Of course. The blue Chaos Emerald," he said, like it was obvious.

Tails looked at Sonic, concern in his eyes. "What? Why aren't you going back to normal?" he asked nervously.

"I think I get it. When I found the first Chaos Emerald with Silver and Blaze, that was the blue one. Trying to react with the same Emerald more than once apparently doesn't do anything, because science or magic or whatever," Sonic deduced. He shrugged casually as if it were no big deal. "Eh, at least we got that out of the way."

"Goodbye for now," Shadow said to his teammates. "Don't get yourselves killed in action while I'm gone."

"Hardly a romantic farewell," Rouge complained, but she smiled as she said it. "Bye-bye, Shadow. I'll miss you."

Shadow blushed. "I'll miss you too, Rouge."

"I know you will," the bat smiled. The hedgehog took another step towards her, and suddenly they were kissing. Sonic gagged and put a hand over Tails' eyes. It only lasted a few seconds, and then they pulled apart. "See you soon," Rouge finished.

Knuckles didn't look at the couple. Sonic picked up on it, and laughed. "Ooh, Knux is jealous!" he teased. "And now for the Shadow-Rouge-Knuckles love triangle, commencing in three, two, o-"

"I am _not_ jealous," Knuckles argued immediately. "There will be no love triangle of any sort, and if you bring up the subject again, I'll personally hand you over to Eggman."

Sonic laughed. "You definitely like her. She's taken. Deal with it."

 _"_ _I GUESS I'LL JUST STAND HERE, COMPLETELY UNACKNOWLEDGED, THEN,"_ Omega said passive-aggressively.

Commander Tower cleared his throat. "I'm sure you're all enjoying this emotional moment, but time is of the essence," he interrupted. "Make your way to wherever you're heading next, and do not let the Emeralds fall into the wrong hands." Again, as he said this, he shot a glare at Sonic.

"Are we seriously going through this again?" Sonic sighed, noticing the stare. "What part of 'yeah sure I'm turning into a robot but not an evil one' don't you get? Quit it with the aggressive glances already."

The commander's mismatched eyes didn't break contact with Sonic's. "I don't trust you as much as I normally would," he explained emotionlessly. "Coming back after five years of apparently being dead is suspicious on its own, but visibly being taken over by the enemy takes it to a new level. Times have changed, and you'll need to prove your innocence."

"Let's go," Tails suggested, looking at Tower distrustfully. "Bye, Rouge and Omega."

 _"_ _GOOD LUCK,"_ Omega told them. _"DON'T DIE. THAT WOULD BE UNFORTUNATE."_

"Yeah, I'm with you there," Sonic agreed, finally looking away from Tower. "Well, let's go to the next part of this adventure."

The four heroes walked away to the Tornado, wherever it would take them next. As they went, Knuckles turned to Shadow and said, "Your boss sucks."

 **And there you go - Shadow is on the team. Yay! Also, that little Shadouge moment will be the only properly romantic part in the story, and no, I will not go into more detail. (Confession: that's the first time I tried to write a kiss. I think they're supposed to last more than three sentences.) So, a few loose ends were tied up so that they don't start being inconvenient later on and messing up the plot, and we got to see teams Sonic and Dark beat up the Babylon Rogues, which was fun. Also, CHAPTER 13 AND NOBODY DIED. I guess I had to make at least one bad thing happen… I'm sorry Tails ;-;**

 **But yeah, that's the chapter done. Sorry for taking so long with it. See you next time!**


End file.
